


Halfway

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fic, Fallen Angels, M/M, Men of Letters Headquarters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:42:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Fallen!Castiel bunker fic; Castiel arrives back at the bunker after six months of being missing, with eighteen of his newly-fallen brothers and sisters in tow; shameless schmoop and angel-care ensues. ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd also like to share with you guys [this gorgeous mix that Sydney (Oceanstiels) on tumblr made for this fic](http://oceanstiels.tumblr.com/post/58819111667/one-love-two-mouths-a-mix-for-katies-fic)! it is utterly gorgeous ♥

He runs up the bunker stairs double-time, wary of what will be on the other side but _knowing_ somehow that the surveillance cameras Sam set up weren’t lying; that what was on the other side of the door wasn’t a shifter; not a demon, not a spectre, nothing; just Cas, who has been missing for six months now, and Dean has to, _has to_ get the door open _now._ “Cas!”

He gets to it; fumbles with the heavy panel for _way_ too long, turning the wheel that unlocks it the wrong way before he gets it right, hands slipping, sweaty, on the metal. He says, again, “Cas!” as if Castiel could possibly hear him through all that steel, and then finally gets it open, light flooding from the outside onto him, haloing the silhouette of that familiar body, that well-missed face.

He falls on him, practically; swamps him in his arms. “Cas. God _damn it, Cas.”_ His voice is muffled by Castiel’s shoulder, and he laughs blearily when Castiel’s arms raise, hesitant, to encircle him; to squeeze him in return.

“Dean.” He mutters, softly, and Dean has _missed_ him like nothing else, and it is so wonderful to be standing there, Castiel warm against his chest, that for a moment his eyes don’t quite register what they’re seeing, his chin resting on Castiel’s shoulder, gaze pitched over his back.

Twenty-odd pairs of bewildered eyes stare back at him.

Dean stumbles backwards, out of Castiel’s arms.

“Whoa. Who – Cas?” he says, worried that this will be yet another ‘ _Dean, I fucked up’_ situation – and Castiel’s gaze is measured, soft and pleading, and he looks guilty before he sighs.

He casts an arm back at the crowd behind him, a small, nervous, jostling throng of ragged men and women, in various states of dress. “Dean.” He says, again. “These are my brothers and sisters. Some of them.” He finishes, softly, then adds – quieter, as if expecting a blow in response – “We need your help.”

\---

There are eighteen fallen angels in the Men Of Letters Headquarters, and as Dean and Castiel lead them down the sheet-metal stairs like weird pied pipers, their sensible shoes clanking, Dean wonders at how quickly his life shifts from one stage to another.

They get downstairs and the angels follow behind them in pairs, meekly. In the living room, the gaggle stands in front of the two of them, most of them with their hands clasped in front.

They vary hugely from one another; big and small, skin that ranges from glass-pale to deep brown; men and women, alike; but in one aspect they are pretty much uniform, and it’s that every single one of them is dressed like a churchgoer.

Dean doesn’t know how he didn’t know, immediately, what they were; they carry themselves, all of them, in the same strange, curious way that Castiel used to. They hold themselves like strangers in their own bodies, and all of them are in wrinkled, cheap suits or pastel-coloured dresses. Most of them are ragged, and dirty; their pants are torn at the knees, their stockings laddered and ripped. There’s a pale blonde one, a woman, whose high-heeled shoes are missing their heels, and another whose face is so filthy that he must have rolled down a hillside.

They are ragtag, and messy, and Dean is loath to admit it, not being a huge fan of angels in general, but they are _endearing,_ like children grown too big by accident, watching for Castiel’s instruction with big, wide eyes.

Castiel mutters to them at large, something Dean doesn’t understand, the syllables wide and heavy, and they all nod to him and murmur in response.

Then, as a slightly awkward, exhausted collective, they all sit cross-legged on the floor of the headquarters, like kids at Sunday school waiting for a parable.

Dean eyes them for a second before he looks at Castiel; then he puts a hand on Castiel’s back and gently, quickly, leads him across the room, out of earshot.

“Cas, what the _hell?”_

Castiel has his eyes on his siblings, but he turns back to Dean, at his words. “Quite the opposite.” He says, softly, and sounds sad. “They’re Fallen, Dean. We all are.”

Dean glances at them, then finally looks, properly, at Castiel.

He looks different, somehow. Dean’s never really seen so many people defer to him before, never seen him take on _leadership_ so fully and restively, and it fits him, this meek little gang of disciples, however it makes Dean’s heart twinge with memory, too.

Castiel’s trenchcoat and suit jacket are gone; his tie is loose around his neck. For some reason, that’s the thing that strikes Dean across the face, like a blow; not the falling, but the coat.

“Where’s your stuff?” he blurts, and Castiel looks at him as if he’s mad.

“Pardon?”

“Where’s your – you know. Where’s your coat?”

Castiel smiles gently at him; looks almost pleased. “I gave it to one of the others, to keep them warm. The jacket got…misplaced.” He shrugs, carefully. “It’s been a long walk.”

Dean looks him up and down again, then again at the silent, gathered angels. If they speak, they do so very, very quietly, like they’re not allowed. “Can you leave them long enough to get a drink?”

Castiel looks at him seriously. “They’re not children, Dean. They just need…direction.”

“Okay. Well. Can they cope without directions, for a second?”

“Yes.” He says, and follows Dean through to the kitchen, where Dean immediately pulls a bottle of whiskey down from the shelves. He pours himself a fifth into a glass, and picks another up off the drainer for Cas; pours out the brown liquid, hands it to him, and Castiel thanks him, quietly.

They look at each other for a moment, and then Dean laughs. “Sam’s gonna shit himself.”

“Do you think he’ll mind?”

“I doubt it.” A pause stretches between them. “S’good to see you, Cas.” He says, looking at him over the top of his glass, and Castiel smiles, indulgently.

“You too.”

“Where’ve you been, man?” Dean asks him, and hopes it doesn’t come out too plaintive.

“Everywhere.” Castiel breathes, and tension seems to swoop out of his whole body in one long thread, his shoulders slumping. He leans against the counter, and Dean appreciates the gesture with his gaze, carefully. “I landed in Colorado, but I’ve been… collecting them.”

“So you found them?”

Castiel nods, briefly. “Found them. Pulled them to their feet.” He shrugs, and glances backwards, as if he can look through the wall, at his brothers and sisters. “They’re… strange.” He says, absent, and then turns back to Dean.

“They’re a bit like you used to be.” Dean says, unsure if Castiel will take it well; but he just nods. “Quieter, though. Less …threatening.” They smile at each other. There’s a lot going unsaid.

Dean takes a huge breath inwards, then gulps at his whiskey and puts it down on the counter, emptied. “Okay, Cas.” He looks at Castiel as earnestly as he can. “What do you need?”

“A place for them to sleep, and gather themselves, for a while. Nothing else. We’ll move on soon.”

Dean’s heart twists sharply, but he nods. “Okay. I think we can do that.” Is all he says, and Castiel smiles so gratefully that Dean hasn’t the heart to complain, or bring up any kind of flaw in the plan. He doesn’t say, _go where?_ He’s tired of trying to hang on to Castiel’s coat-tails, and pull him back. He’s not even wearing the coat anymore; what would Dean have to grab? He takes a deep breath, instead, and feels it swell inside his chest.

“Okay. I’m gonna go wake Sam, see if we can find somewhere for them to go. You… keep an eye on them.”

“Okay.” Castiel looks down at his glass, still half-full, and a smile creeps its way onto his face. “Thankyou, Dean. It means a lot.”

Dean takes another breath, laughs and cuts it off, hesitant, half-humorless. He claps Castiel on the shoulder as he turns to leave the kitchen.

“Yeah, well. Don’t make a big deal of it.”

**\---**

He rouses Sam from sleep with ease, once he says Cas is back – Sam shoots up in bed, gets to his feet so quickly that he almost bowls Dean over, and is “battle ready” in seconds, even though he looks like an idiot with his pyjama shorts, his long hair rucked around his head.

“What’s happening? Is he okay? Where is he? Who’s here?”

“I’m – he’s fine, you big weirdo, come on. I can’t – it’s better if you just see.”

Sam, predictably when faced with a room full of listless fallen angels, is _excited._

He stands in the doorway and for a minute he gropes for Dean’s arm, at his side; when he finds it, he grips him tight. “Dean, there are like two-dozen people in here.”

“Yep.”

They stand in the doorway. Castiel is across the room, crouching, speaking to one of the angels; a young man, dark skin, short dark hair. At the sound of Sam’s voice, though, he raises his head, and he _grins._ Dean isn’t used to it, not even from this distance, and it’s not even directed at him; Cas is so _happy_ to see them. It shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does.

Castiel walks over to them, and hovers uncertainly a few feet away. “Sam.” He says, warmly.

“Hey, Cas.” Sam grins in return, then nods at the room full of angels. “You, uh, brought some friends over?”

“They’re my brothers and sisters.” He says. “We were going to stay, for a while. If that’s okay with both of you.”

“’Course.” Sam says, immediately. Dean looks at him.

“So, you think, five in here, two to each bedroom?”

Sam looks out at the living room; the angels have started migrating from their places on the floor, but not far. They sit, clustered, in a little group, and mostly they don’t make noise.

This kind of thing is actually something that comes naturally, to Dean; he goes straight downstairs to the laundry room; gathers armfuls of blankets and pillows and sheets. When he comes back upstairs again, Sam and Cas are separating the angels into pairs, and moving them gently from the room. Dean hands Castiel enough pillows and blankets, counting them out into his arms, and when he’s finished Castiel looks at him, again, and his expression is grateful, _again._ Dean stifles a groan.

“C’mon, Cas, don’t do this to me. It’s nothing. You pulled me out of hell.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, shut up about it before I change my mind.” But he grins, despite himself. _This is_ something he can get into, something good. Caring for people. Helping a friend.

With Castiel gone from the room, the angels look even more hesitant than before. They gaze at Dean with wide, wary eyes, and he wonders what happened to them to make them so _scared._ Angels aren’t like this; they’re not nervous, not _careful._ They’re frenetic and hasty and rude and _obnoxious,_ and Dean doesn’t miss it, exactly, but he does wish they’d talk a little more.

He looks down at them, sitting on the floor. Two boys, three girls – men and women, really, but it’s hard not to think of them as young. “Alright. Get up, guys.”

The angels rise simultaneously to their feet; they even blink almost in sync, and that’s gonna get _real_ creepy, _real_ fast. “Okay, so we’ve got three on the couch, two on the floor, I think. Which of you wants the couch?”

The angels are silent. They look at each other, then back at Dean, and he shifts his grip on the bedding in his arms. “C’mon. I’m not gonna make you fight for it.”

Silence, again, and then one of them clears its throat, very, very quietly.

“I’d like the couch.” She says; a short woman, her skin light brown. Her pale pink dress is torn and muddied; at the shoulder, it’s either stained with rust or with blood; Dean can’t tell.

“Okay. Cool.” He walks over to her, and hands her a pillow, and some bedding. She takes them like he’s handing her a bomb; or like his hands are dirty. That doesn’t make much sense, either, because hers really _are;_ how would she knows where Dean’s have been?

Her expression – distasteful – rankles him a little, but he lets it go. He looks at them again. “C’mon, guys, we’ll be here all night. Couch or floor?”

They get it organized, eventually; the angels are quiet, and they don’t like it when Dean comes near them, but they’re mild and they’re generally obedient, even if they _do_ visibly tense whenever Dean comes close.

He gets them onto the couches, and set up on the floor. They lie so still tat it’s like they’re in hibernation, or cryogenically frozen, not _sleeping._ In some ways, they remind him of Cas, but in others, not at all. The man in question returns a little later, whilst Dean is hanging in the doorway to the living room, watching over his new charges. When he speaks, his voice is pitched low.

“Sam went to bed. Are they alright?”

“Fine. I don’t think they like me much.”

Castiel makes a noise, neither agreement or disavowal. He’s warm at Dean’s side.

“Where are _you_ gonna sleep?” Dean asks him, and Castiel shrugs.

“I could watch them, in here.”

“Cas, you look like shit. You’re not doing that.”

“No beds left, though.”

“No.”

Dean looks at him, slowly. Last time they saw each other, things were – stressful. He’s had some time, though, and he’s not angry anymore, just confused, mostly. He doesn’t know what this means, what they are; why it hurts so much when Castiel is gone again (and he’s _always_ gone). He’s got an inkling, though.

“You could bunk with me. I could take the floor, we could alternate. You’re not gonna be here for long, right?”

Castiel’s expression turns carefully neutral at that last, and Dean mentally kicks himself. “Of course. That would work.” He pauses, and looks long at his brothers and sisters, lying quietly in the living room, before turning from the room and walking down the hall, to Dean’s room, Dean in tow. Dean finds himself surprised that Castiel remembers the way; he’s only been here once before.

“You want pyjamas or anything?” he asks, once they’ve made Castiel a slim bedroll on the floor, out of blankets and pillows; Dean’s coverlet, folded in half.

“I’ll cope.” Is Castiel’s only reply, and Dean feels a strange tension in the air when he finally lies down in his bed. Usually he’ll splay himself right in the centre, but with Castiel in the room it doesn’t seem right, and instead he lies on his front on the left side, about as far from Castiel as he can get.

“Okay. Well.” The pause is uncomfortable. “Night, Cas.” He murmurs into his pillow, and he thinks he hears Castiel laugh gently from the floor.

“Goodnight, Dean.”

**\---**

Dean wakes before Cas does in the morning, and he basically flees the bedroom as soon as his eyes crack open. He trips out as fast as he can, feet light, bare, on the cold floors.

In the kitchen, Sam is already awake; and so too are six angels.

“Morning!” Sam calls, always chipper no matter the fucking hour, and Dean lifts a hand in greeting, heading straight for the coffee maker. The angels, perched at the counter, blink at him in unison as he walks past them.

“Coffee?” he asks them, lifting the pot and sloshing it a little; their gazes, taken slightly aback, are otherwise impassive. They’re silent. Sam catches Dean’s eye as he pours himself a glass of orange juice.

“They haven’t said a word all morning. I asked them if they wanted breakfast, but they just…  _look_  at me.” He says, quietly, so they won’t hear. “Where’s Cas?”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh.” Sam pauses. “Where’d he sleep?”

“My room. My  _floor._ ” He says, quickly, and Sam nods, slowly.

“Right. Obviously.”

It’s really awkward, being in the same room as these creatures that look so much like people, the creatures just  _staring_ at them.

 Dean wonders how it worked; did they plummet to earth in approximations of their chosen vessels, or quickly get permission as they fell? Did their souls fill the churches and the midnight masses, the homes of the devout, and push the human worshippers from their bodies, apologising as they went? Were they human now, or some sideways approximation; was Cas the same as them?

He sighs, and goes to the cabinet; gets out six bowls, six spoons; milk from the refrigerator, some of Sam’s granola from above the sink. He glances back at the line of angels sitting at the counter, says “You guys get Sam’s stuff. S’good for you.”, then pours out six portions of cereal into the bowls, and adds milk.

He sets each bowl down in front of each angel, and hands each of them a spoon. They sit there; they stare down at the cereal, then back up at Dean. “Eat up.” He says, for lack of anything else to add, and they stare back at him, motionless, before one of them takes initiative, and does as he says.

Dean sighs, and leans back, watching them; his hands braced against the counter. It’s  _exhausting_ trying to prompt them to do things, and he isn’t sure how comfortable he is with giving them orders; they’re free now, surely? Shouldn’t they be making their own choices, picking things, making a mess? If  _he_ was them, and he’d been given his agency after so fucking long –  _centuries –_ without it, he’d be… holed up somewhere jerking off, or stealing cars, or following  _Metallica_ around, or  _something._ These guys just seem to sit, and stare; they haven’t even got their own  _clothes._ The angels sit there quietly, and by the time Castiel wanders into the kitchen, still in his shirt, tie and suit pants, they’re chewing gingerly on spoonfuls of cereal, and Sam and Dean are still standing in front of them, watching. They lift their heads, when Castiel comes in.

“Hey, Cas. Sleep well?” Sam asks, and Castiel mutters something to his brothers and sisters in a low, soft tone before he answers. They reply in kind, albeit quieter.

“I think so.” He says, “Are you making coffee?”

Dean nods. “You want some?”

“Please.” Castiel says, like he’s very, very tired. Dean catches his eye, and tries not to flush when he smiles. He looks at the other angels, instead.

“What about you guys? Coffee? Last call.”

One of them, timid as anything – and with a short glance at Castiel, first – raises his hand. He’s short, slightly overweight; a mop of thin blonde hair barely covers his wide forehead. Dean grins at him to reward him – the angel frowns in response – and none of the others speak up.

He makes the coffee – finds out that Castiel takes his with milk, no sugar – and hands it out. For a moment, there is silence again, as they drink; Dean watches the face of the angel who asked for coffee.

“You like it?” he asks, and the angel looks stricken around his mug, and turns to Castiel for confirmation. Castiel laughs, and murmurs something indecipherable at him, quickly – the angel nods at Castiel, then looks at Dean, and shakes his head.

“Well, at least he’s honest.” Dean says, under his breath.

Castiel walks over to the little cluster of angels, and talks to them in a low, measured voice. Dean’s worked out, by now, that the way Castiel talks to them isn’t in English; it doesn’t sound like Enochian, either; but it’s certainly nothing he’s heard on earth before. After Castiel speaks to them, the angels get up from their spots at the counter, and file out of the kitchen. The angel who asked for coffee leaves his half-full mug behind – Sam smirks as he picks it up and takes it to the sink.

“What language is that, Cas?” Sam asks him, and Castiel takes a spot at the counter, himself.

“It’s a –“ he pauses. “It’s enochian. To an extent. It’s hard to explain, it’s a little like…” he pauses, drinking his coffee. “Like pidgin English. Pidgin enochian. It’s a simplified, more colloquial version.”

“Why don’t they just speak English?”

Castiel shrugs. “It’s difficult for them. I don’t think they’re ready to ‘go native’ just yet.”

Dean frowned, remembering how they’d reacted to him, the night before. “Yeah, actually, I was gonna ask – how come they’re so …twitchy?” he pauses, to find the words. “Did something happen to them?”

Castiel shakes his head. “They’re alright. Some of them had some brushes with danger, but I found them fairly quickly. I would imagine any hesitation they have about you and your brother is because they think you’re  _dirty_.”

Dean tries, and fails, not to be offended. “ _Dirty?_ They’re the ones who look like they’ve come here straight from the junkyard!”

Castiel shrugs. “It’s the way they’ve been taught. We all were. None of them have been to earth, before.”

“None of them?” Sam asks, and Castiel turns to him, and nods over the edge of his coffee cup.

“Before Dean and I met –“ Dean barks a laugh, because  _met_ is not really the word, “We hadn’t been on earth for thousands of years. I’m fairly sure I was one of, if not  _the,_ first.”

“So these guys – they’ve been in heaven  _forever_?”

“Until now, yes.” There’s a slight, wistful twist to Castiel’s voice. He sighs. “You have no idea how much this means to me. To us. I’m sorry if their behaviour is …offensive.”

“It’s okay, Cas.” Sam says evenly, and Dean nods along. “It’s totally understandable.” He pauses, “So, uh – what’re you gonna  _do_ with them?” He says, and Castiel is quiet, for a moment, looking down.

“I’m not sure.” He says, soft. “I just couldn’t leave them behind.”

Dean gets it. He clears his throat. “Well, look. How about the easy stuff, first? We’ll get them some clothes, we’ll help them… settle. Show ‘em some of the good things about being here. Maybe help them get over their human-phobia a little.”

Castiel looks at him thankfully; Dean squirms under his gaze, and again wishes acutely that he’d stop. “That’s a good idea.” He says, and pushes himself out of his seat. “They should all be in the living room. We should talk to them, as a group.”

Dean and Sam nod, and get up from the counter to follow him after – but Dean lets Sam go through the doorway first, and stops Castiel before he can follow, with a hand on his arm. “Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?”

“You never did that whole – flinching thing. Not even when you first … _met_ me.” They glance at each other, and Dean grins. He can’t help it. “Hell, I had the scar to prove it.” He falters, briefly, but ploughs on. “How come you didn’t -?”

Castiel looks surprised. His expression goes blank, for a moment, and then he smiles that tiny smile of his; it skirts around his mouth. “I don’t know.” He says, and he looks strangely thrilled by it, though Dean can’t really pinpoint why that would be. “I just  _knew.”_

“About me?”

“About  _all_  of you humans.” He pauses. “But yes, about you.”

“Huh.” He doesn’t know what to say.  _Thanks,_ maybe? “Cool.” Is what he manages, instead, and Castiel’s eyes on him are only slightly mocking, as they go to the living room together.

\---

They decide on a three-pronged plan of action; first,  _clean the angels._ Second,  _clothe the angels._ Third,  _figure out what the angels want._

The last will be the hardest, and Castiel looks dubious, even as Sam suggests it; after speaking to all the angels as a group, they find themselves in the corner of the living room, looking out over them. The angels are less structured in their sitting than the night before, but they’re not exactly lounging; they sit perched on all the chairs they could find; some are on the floor, some on the couch; but they all sit straight, and they seldom speak.

“How can they know what they want?” Castiel says, sounding genuinely concerned. “I don’t even know what  _I_ want.” He mumbles, absently, and Dean gets the sense that they weren’t really meant to hear. “They’re lost.” He says, and his eyes, when he looks out on the seated angels, are so  _heavy._ “But it takes so  _long_  to adapt. And they’re young.” He looks at Dean and Sam, and smiles weakly. “Not young by your standards, but by ours,  _very_.”

“First things first, Cas, okay?” Sam reaches for his shoulder, then pulls his hand back. He looks pointedly at Dean, but Dean just looks back at him –  _what do you expect me to do?_  “We’ll get them all to bathe, and then we’ll find something for them to wear. Must be something around here somewhere, right?”

Dean nods, and hopes he looks as positive as Sam does. “Sure.” He says. “Me ‘n Sam’ll fill the tubs, you rally the troops.” He shrugs. “There’s at least two bathrooms; figure if we dip ‘em all real quick, we can have them dried in time for tonight.” He pauses. “’sides, there’s like a hundred Dead Guy robes in here, so there’ll be  _something_  for them to wear, at least.”

Castiel still looks hesitant, but he nods. “Alright. I’ll speak to them.”

\---

Bathing angels turns out to be a lot easier than Dean imagined; the angels, to their credit, are nothing if not obedient. Castiel was obviously pretty specific with them, because they file into the bathroom one by-one; they undress while Dean averts his eyes, they drop their soiled clothes in the corner of the room; they get into the bath, and let Dean hose them down.

They’re so  _strange,_ the way they peer so curiously at themselves. Dean doubts they’ve ever even been naked before; most of them put their arms on the rim of the bath, entirely still, but some of them seem unable to resist poking at their own flesh, and they embarrass him with their tender, timid explorations; they touch their own hands, their own bellies, their own breasts; it’s not a sexual touch, but something naïve. Innocent. Dean washes them as quickly as possible – shampoos their hair, sluices them with the shower-head, bundles them into a robe, and sends them out – but it resonates with him, watching them. He can’t  _not_ think of Cas; wonder if he was ever like this, quiet and gentle and contemplative, and Dean just managed to miss it. He wonders how being human is taking its toll on  _Castiel;_  asking him about it seems to have fallen by the wayside, with so many charges to care for, and Dean worries a little for him, even though he seems relatively fine.

He wonders where Castiel fell, and if it hurt, when he did. Some of his brothers and sisters are bruised; one flinches when he pours water over her scalp, and when he parts her hair he finds a raw, red lump, from a blow. Luckily, most of them seem fine; but there are scrapes and bruises, and they’re telling. None of them could have had too easy a time getting here.

Eighteen angels and two tubs means nine angels to bathe, each; when Dean is on his last, his arms ache from holding up the shower head, but he doesn’t complain. With one last body in the bath, going pink from the steam, Castiel appears around the door.

He mutters something to the angel – a redhead, small and plump, freckles all over her shoulders – and she looks at him and nods, and replies dully in the same strange, ancient syllables. Castiel nods at her, satisfied, and then turns his attention to Dean.

“Is she your last one?”

“Yeah. How’s Sam doing?”

“Three more.” He wanders into the bathroom and, to Dean’s surprise, comes to kneel next to him, beside the bath. His sister’s arm lies on the edge of it, and he takes her hand; the gesture is so tender, so odd, coming from Castiel (usually so  _brash)_ that it makes Dean feel strangely hot, all over.

“Did they behave themselves?” Castiel asks him, and Dean laughs softly as he kneads his fingers in the angel’s fine red hair.

“’Course they did.” He lifts the showerhead, and cups the angel’s hair back from her forehead with a hand as he rinses the shampoo out, so it doesn’t get in her eyes (not that she’d complain, if it did). He brushes her hair back with his fingers, making sure the suds are all out – thank god he’s had practise of long hair like this, with Sammy – and then touches her on the shoulder.

“Okay. You’re done.” He looks at Cas. “Can you get her a towel?”

Castiel nods mutely, and rises to his feet; he plucks one of the large towels from the pile Dean has made by the door, and brings it over. Dean stands up, in turn, to take it; he unfolds it, lets it unfurl in his arms, and as Castiel gently helps her step out of the bath, her hand in his, Dean steps forward and wraps the towel around her.

She looks at him curiously. They all seemed incredibly small with the towel over their shoulders, feet bare on the tile, and she's no different.

Castiel goes back again and gets another towel; he drapes it over her head, and rubs gently at her hair, to get it dry. Then he takes it away, and – in another move which surprises Dean entirely – leans down, and kisses her cheek.

He mutters something to her, softly, and she nods; Dean passes him one of the long bathrobes that he gave to the others, and looks away as Castiel helps her shrug her way into it.

Castiel tucks her hair behind her ears. He mutters something to her – she  _laughs –_ and then she wanders out of the bathroom and away, after where her brothers and sisters have gone.

Dean's staring. He swallows. “Um.” He gathers himself. “I’m gonna go and see if we’ve got enough food for everyone. No one’s a vegetarian, right?”

Castiel laughs. “I doubt they know either way. Are you alright?”

Dean’s still staring at him; it’s like a different side of Castiel has been suddenly revealed to him; like Dean only ever saw one part of him, all this time, and suddenly that part has been pulled away; but moreso is the realisation that this isn’t  _new_ at all. He remembers, dimly, Castiel at his bedside, after Alastair; and he remembers his touch, tender though it  _burned,_ in hell. He tries  _not_  to remember it; wouldn’t describe it, if prompted; but in the flashes of remembrance, sometimes what comes through is a touch that was far and away from  _holy wrath_ and more like the careful hand of a friend. He remembers that hand on the side of his face, in the crypt.

“Fine. You’re, uh – good with them.” He says, for lack of other words, and Castiel smiles.

“They’re my family. I love them.” Plainly, without artifice. Dean is struck, again, by how much he’s missed him.

“I can tell.” He makes for the door, then pauses. “How about you? Bathtime?”

Castiel looks at the bathtub, draining its water away, and nods. “I think so. It’s been a long journey.” He goes for the buttons on his shirt, and Dean lingers a little too long, watching the nimble trip of his hands as they move.

“Okay.” He’s embarrassed. He edges out of the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Castiel looks at him, raises a brow, and smiles. “Of course.” 

\---

That night, with Dean taking the floor this time, Castiel in the bed, Dean can’t sleep.

“Cas?”

“Mm?” Christ, it’s like a fucking slumber party. Dean and Sam made dinner for twenty-one people today (well, nineteen fallen angels), and it’s taken it out of him in a way he really never expected. The search for clothes has turned up nothing, yet, but they’re hopeful; the bunker was built for way more than two, after all; and the angels seem satisfied with their robes, at least for now. Castiel’s voice, above him, is careful.

“Are _you_ okay?”

He promised himself, when he came back from purgatory, that he’d do this; talk. It’s harder than he expected it to be, but he’s determined. _Talk to me._ Maybe once he starts getting people to talk to _him,_ he can start talking back. It’s the root of things; talking. It’s one of the reasons, he thinks, that he and Cas fell apart in the first place. When their relationship began, Castiel was honest to a fault; and Dean can’t fight the notion that somewhere along the line Castiel learned from _him_ to lie.

So he’s trying to fix it, just in case.

“Me?” Castiel replies, perplexed. “I’m fine.”

“I mean, about …not being an angel anymore.”

“Oh.” Silence pervades the air; Dean shifts a little, where he is, on the floor. “I’ll be fine.” He says, which isn’t exactly what Dean was hoping for.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Castiel hums a sigh.

“You’re a good brother, Cas.” Dean says, for lack of anything else to add, and Castiel chuckles softly.

“I haven’t been.” His voice is soft. “But I’m trying.”

Dean falls asleep to the long, shallow breaths that Castiel takes, and imagines he can see, or feel, the heaving of his chest.

He thinks of Castiel, like the angels, looking at himself for the first time, and for the first time being nothing other than skin, organs, and beneath that; a man.

It’s not pity that he feels for Castiel, in this moment, but admiration; these angels are unequipped for humanity, true; but Castiel has been here a long time, and has done so _much_ alone.

He thinks of the first time Castiel took a breath, in a body that was solely his; thinks of him, stranded alone by some roadside, freshly human.

He thinks of Castiel’s fingers on his own flesh, fingertips dipping into every line and ripple of him.

He’s sorry that he missed it.    


	2. Chapter 2

Sam and Dean are searching for clothes in the bunker – Castiel is elsewhere, making sure his brothers and sisters are clean, fed, and using the bathroom properly – when Sam clears his throat.

“Y’know, they’ve been here three days, and I still don’t know any of their names.”

Dean looks at him, sensing that this is going somewhere. He says nothing; waits for Sam to continue. When he came into the kitchen that morning Castiel and Sam were deep in conversation, and he can’t deny the fact that when he woke, leaned up, and saw that his bed was empty, he’d been _convinced_ for about ten agonizing minutes that Castiel was gone, again, for good.

But Castiel was still here, and when he came into the kitchen and found Cas and his brother with their heads bent together, they sat straight again _way_ too fast.

“So, uh.” He rounds a corner and they find yet another room untouched for the last few decades; it’s another box room, and it’s filled with just that; boxes. The Men of Letters had a system of organization that Dean and Sam haven’t yet deciphered, and that means a lot of trawling through weird shit for the sake of the angels.

Sam gets to his knees in front of one of the stacks of boxes, and pulls one down from the top. He opens it, and starts pushing his hands through ( _carefully;_ they’ve had enough run-ins with curses to know that you don’t take chances with this crap) before he speaks again. Dean picks his own box, and starts to do the same.

“So, what were you and Cas talking about?”

Sam doesn’t reply for a moment, and Dean wonders if it’s something he’s just not supposed to know. He doesn’t know how he feels about that, actually; the possibility that Sam might know things about Cas that he’s just not _comfortable_ sharing with Dean.

“I was asking him about what he’s been doing these past few months.” He says, “Y’know. How he made his way back.”

“Oh.” Dean says, with a pang of guilt so sharp he has to push his hands slightly more firmly into the box. “What’d he say?” he knows he should have asked, himself, but if he’s honest he’s terrified of the answer. In his experience, at least, there are a lot of things that the world can ask of you, in trying to keep your siblings safe. There’s a lot that can happen, too, on a highway; especially when you have little to lose.

“Not a lot. Nothing of real gravity, anyway.” He hears the shrug in his brother’s voice. “Mostly I think he just wandered around.” He laughs, but it is mostly mirthless. “He missed us.”

“Y’think?”

“Yeah, Dean, I do.”

There is quiet. Dean digs through the box a little more, but all that’s in there is more blankets, of which they have enough. He pulls back from the box and sits on his heels.

“Next room?” he says, to Sam – but when he raises his head his brother is _looking_ at him, and he is so embarrassed that he has to turn away.

So Dean missed him, too. They both did; however undependable Castiel has been the last few years, Dean still thinks of him as a constant; an unerring stopping-post, something to ground him on. Castiel is his friend, and Dean missed him. How could he not?

But Sam is the only one who actually _saw_ him miss him; worry about him; believe that he was dead. No word for six months, and even though Castiel has been gone longer, before, it doesn’t help.

Dean was a misery, however much he tried to put a brave face on it, and neither of them had spoken about Castiel before he came back.  Sam tried to broach the subject – but Dean would either deflect the questions, or outright tell him to shut his mouth.

Now that he’s back, he feels light again; but Sam remembers, and so does he, what a mess he is when Castiel isn’t there. He wonders if Cas even knows what it does; being without him. He hopes not.

“Yeah, okay.” Sam says, after a moment, and Dean is relieved they’re not going to talk about it now. He doesn’t know what he would have said.

\---

They find, eventually, something akin to a walk-in wardrobe, hidden on one of the floors they hadn’t yet explored in fullness; it’s _full_ of clothes. Waistcoats, pants with creased lines, even monogrammed pyjamas, which Sam pulls a face at but Dean gathers armfuls of with glee.

“D.W is a pretty common set of initials, right? Bet I can find one that’d look like _mine.”_

“You’re gross.”

They drag up as much as they can to the floor where the living-room is, and offer them to the angels as-is; in a big, disorderly pile.

For a moment, there’s silence. Dean and Sam return from downstairs, enter through the doorway to the living-room, and find the angels and their brother mostly sitting quietly. They drop the clothes on the floor with enthusiasm, thrilled by their success, and they are met with total silence – though Castiel tips a smile at them from across the room.

“Okay.” Sam says, awkwardly. “Uh. Have at it, guys. Go.”

The angels blink. Then Castiel mutters to them something short, in an encouraging voice; and slowly, they start to rise from their seats.

They got in drabs and trickles, some braver than others, but eventually all eighteen angels are clustered around the piles of clothes, plucking items from the fray. There’s shirts, pants; it’s mostly guys’ stuff, but they figured the angels would really mind, having been genderless for all of their lives, until now.

It’s charming, and Dean finds himself smiling at the way they dress themselves. Some of them are meticulous, pulling shirtsleeves carefully on, buttoning with utmost gentleness, turning to Castiel to confirmation that they were doing it ‘right’ – others button jackets over naked chests, put their pants on backwards, wear waistcoats without shirts underneath, like the illustrations of Aladdin that Dean knew, as a kid.

It is enthrallingly lovely, watching them make this choice; and he smiles when he sees Sam helping a small, blonde angel pull her hair back using a long, burgundy tie.

As the angels devour the pile, Dean sidles over to Cas.

“You gonna pick something?” He says, and Castiel looks at him.

“I thought they were just for – _them.”_ He says. “My clothes are-“ he pauses. “I’ve always worn this.”

Dean shrugs. “Angels only. Go for it.” He shrugs. “I mean, if you want to.”

Castiel looks at him, considering, and then nods. He goes to the pile without another word, and picks things out with such fastidiousness that Dean ends up _convinced_ Castiel had been eyeballing the pile for a lot longer than he was admitting.

Castiel comes back to join him, eventually; he doesn’t dress in the middle of the living room, like the others, and instead leaves for a few moments before returning; his shirt tucked in, braces pulled up over his shoulders, pants buttoned, feet in white socks. No tie.

Sam whistles low when he comes in; Castiel treats him to a rare, wide smile.

He joins Dean again, as if nothing has changed; the back of his pants rasp against the back of the couch, where they’re leaning; and together, very quietly, they watch the angels pick out their clothes, and the pile of fabric in front of them slowly shrink.

\---

He’d expected a gramophone in the bunker; a record player, a _piano;_ but instead there’s a radio, a heavy-duty thing that took hours to get going. It plays everything in a strange, tinny voice; but it’s nice; charming, in its way.

He finds Castiel in the library, trying the buttons on the radio with a curious, focused kind of ineptitude. Dean can’t fault him; he was the same way with the thing at first, and Castiel is doing a better job at getting it to make actual sound than Dean did for the first hour.

Castiel is sitting on the table beside the radio, and Dean jumps up to join him. For a moment, they’re silent; the radio, some golden oldies station, plays _California Dreamin’_ by The Mamas and the Papas. But it’s quiet, and after Dean recognises it, he barely realises it’s playing at all.

“You look good.” He says quietly, nodding at Castiel’s clothes, and Castiel smiles, but only briefly.

“Thankyou.”

“You okay?”

“mm.” Castiel says, in a way that clearly means ‘no’. Dean elbows him in the side, gently.

“What is it?”

“Thinking.” Castiel says, and takes in a deep breath. “It’s alright, Dean. I’m being …this is ridiculous.” He says, with a small laugh, and Dean’s heart tightens; twists. “You should sleep. It’s late.”

“No, c’mon. I’m not tired. What’s up? What’re you thinking about?”

 “The same thing as always, I suppose.” He looks at his feet; between his knees, his hands are clasped. “What happened after – What I did. What happened.”

Dean almost says, _but it’s been so long,_ before he remembers how he thinks of his mother every single day.

“It shattered me.” Castiel says, so soft that Dean barely hears him. He is looking at his hands; Dean’s chest feels strange and tight. “It changed me.” He says, with an air of finality, but Dean wants him to go on. Tell him everything, no matter how much it hurts him to hear the words. He knows, in his core, that what Castiel did had both very little and _everything_ to do with Dean at once, and though he can’t take the blame, he can’t be fully absolved of it, either.

They’re trapped, the two of them, in their own little whirling spheres of regret and desperation. Dean doesn’t even know if those two spheres can _cross,_ let alone be understood; he doesn’t know if Castiel is more alien to him now than he’s ever been, or if he’ll remain that way.

To be honest, though, he’s bored by it. It’s _tiring._

He takes Castiel’s hand.

“C’mon.”

He gets to his feet.

Castiel looks at him dimly, and Dean sees that his eyes are dark, but dry; there’s a fold in his forehead where his eyebrows are drawn together, and for a moment Dean is genuinely concerned that his face will stick that way. They’ve both been wallowing – and for good reasons, too – but _Christ_ it would be nice to forget about it for once, even if only for an evening.

His palm sweats around Castiel’s fingers.

“C’mon. You look like Cary Grant already-“ Castiel lifts a dubious brow. “Might as well complete the thing.”

Castiel follows Dean to his feet in a wary, exhausted sort of way; his face looks raw and a little wrongfooted, like he’s got no idea what Dean’s asking of him; maybe Dean doesn’t quite know, himself.

He’s embarrassed, manoeuvring him; Castiel stands there blank and obstinate, the thin warble of _Dearest,_ Buddy Holly, hovering in the air as if waiting for them to begin. Dean shifts Castiel’s arms and laughs because Castiel is pliant with his body but utterly, _excruciatingly_ condescending in his facial expression. He looks at Dean as if Dean is being ridiculous.

“What are you doing.” He says flatly, and Dean laughs again, and with Castiel’s hand in his, he uses the other to encourage his elbow to lift, then lays it on Castiel’s shoulder.

“I’m not saying-“ he looks Castiel in the eyes, because he wants him to _hear_ this. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about it.” He tries to keep his voice level, but Castiel’s face is making him want to laugh and frown at the same time; he looks so _critical,_ so unenthused, and Dean wants – in some strange, obscure way – to jostle him. To make him _move._ “But you can’t think about it every minute of every day.” He pauses. “You have to _live,_ Cas.”

“And what if-“ Castiel’s voice is cut off in surprise when Dean moves his feet and pulls him forward, back, a little – tries to push him into a soft sway, grinning at him. His face slackens in irritation. “What if I _can’t stop thinking about it?”_

“Then you find something else to think about, Cas.” He says, and thinks of the things he puts himself into, during the phases of his life when the nights are long and he’s afraid. “Your brothers and sisters need you.” He says quietly. “Maybe think about them.”

“I _am._ ” Castiel says, frustrated, and Dean nods. “It makes it worse.”

“Yeah, I know.” He pauses, and realigns his hand with Castiel’s shoulder, and feels something soft and lovely swell like a balloon just below his lungs. “Okay, then. Think about me. And Sammy.” A pause, again. “We need you, too.” Softer, “ _I_ need you, anyway.”

“Dean.” Castiel says, and sounds tired, again. He twists his hand out of Dean’s grip, and fits both his palms to Dean’s cheekbones, thumbs warm, round points on the skin beside his nose. He sighs. He says Dean’s name, again, and tilts his face to look at him. “Oh, Dean.” He says softly, but it’s punctuation; it’s not even really words. He sounds so wrung-out when he says it, but his eyes flutter closed; his mouth tightens. There’s reluctance, bitter mirth, in his smile. “I don’t-“ but he stops, and he looks over Dean’s shoulder, and Dean’s hands have moved of their own accord to thumb at his ribs, but Castiel isn’t looking at that.

He takes his hands away from Dean’s face.

“Diri.” He says, and Dean doesn’t understand until he turns, and looks towards the wide arch of the doorway, as well.

Castiel breaks from his hands and goes over to the angel – a young vessel, maybe less than twenty, with soft, looping brown curls clustered around his face. His hands, nervous, pull at the cloth of his ‘new’ clothes; high-waisted pants, a shirt badly buttoned. His feet are bare.

“Castiel.” His voice has a rumble to it, when he speaks, that Dean only hears from the angels when they say Castiel’s name; like it’s how it’s _meant_ to be said, in the true accent. His body is flushed, skin warm, but cool where Castiel’s hands were placed on his face.

“Diri, are you-“ Castiel stops speaking english, and reverts to the enochian, in a low voice; he puts his hand on Diri’s shoulder and leans close, when he speaks.

Dean is isolated in the middle of the library, and feels very far away, as well as acutely embarrassed. Over Castiel’s shoulder, Castiel’s brother _stares_ at him with wide, innocent eyes.

“Cas?” He tries, and Castiel lifts his head at the sound of his voice. “Problem?”

Castiel shakes his head. His hand is on the younger angel’s shoulder. “Nothing we can’t handle.” He says, with a soft, apologetic smile; and by ‘we’ he means he and his brother, not he and Dean.

Castiel leaves; goes down the hallway with his brother, the younger angel’s hand slipped into his; and Dean goes to turn off the radio, but not until he’s let the next song run its course.  


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dean embarrasses an angel, dean and cas talk Urges, and the bunker has a roof, now.

“Jesus!”

Dean zips out of the room as quickly as he’d entered it, then backs into the hallway, shutting the door hard behind him. He wanders back up to the closed door and shouts, “Sorry.” - there’s no response from the angel inside.

Knock first, then.

Okay.

Good to know.

He carries on down the hallway after that, knocking carefully on the closed bedroom doors and giving the angels within _plenty_ of time to answer before he gives up and calls them for dinner through the door.

He half-walks, half- _runs_ to find Sam and tell him what happened, but instead he runs – mostly literally – into Castiel, presumably on his way to reiterate Dean’s point about dinner. Just the _sight_ of him makes Dean flush and mumble.

“Cas! Cas. Hi. Don’t, uh. Fourth door down. She’s busy.”

Castiel steps back to look at him properly. “Are you okay?”

Dean figures he might as well go all-in. Cas will probably find out later, anyway. “I just walked in on one of your sisters, uh-“

Castiel looks immediately stressed. “What? Is she alright? Who is it?”

“I can’t remember – I don’t think I know her name. She’s fine!” he says, quickly. “I just wanted to check, like – she was –“ he makes a gesture, then realises it’s not entirely applicable in this situation, then just drops his hand. “Jerkin’ it. You know.”

Castiel looks at him like he’s being deliberately obtuse. “Dean.”

“She was –“ He can’t think of a girl euphemism. “Masturbating.”

Castiel looks relieved, then raises a brow. “Alright.” He says, slowly. “…What did you want to check?”

Dean falters. “Isn’t that a little…blasphemous?”

“That’s very puritanical of you.”

“You know what I mean!”

Castiel smiles at him with his head tilted to the side, perhaps as endeared to Dean as he is puzzled. “It’s fine.” He says, shrugging. “Even if God _did_ have a qualm – which he doesn’t, to my knowledge – It hardly matters now.”

“Right.” Dean pauses, and Cas is still looking at him carefully, that little smile playing about his mouth; amused and affectionate, at the same time. Dean is glad he’s out of reach; he thinks if he was a little closer, he might have done something stupid. Remembers Castiel’s hands on his face, just a few nights before. “Just wanted to make sure she wasn’t gonna get in trouble.”

Castiel shrugs. “We all do it.”

With that, and the tiniest smile, he walks off, leaving Dean in his wake _, that_ little image scooting around his head with the kind of malevolence that doesn’t go away easily.

\---

Caught, as he is, in a whirlwind of making dinner for twenty-one and trying to figure out if he’s even a hunter anymore, Dean forgets to ask anything else about the incident. He’s got Castiel half-helping, half under his feet all day, and whenever they’re close Dean has to find some excuse to move as far away as possible, which lands him with aching heels by the time the angels are finally going to bed, fed and clothed and clean, again. They bathe themselves now, wonder of wonders; they learn quickly.

They’re developing, however slowly; obviously some differently than others, but it’s all there; some of them are more solitary, some hang around in circles, talking in their strange, hesitant tongues. Some are _fascinated_ by Sam, and one in particular – an older woman with pixie-cut black hair – hangs off his arm in the library, making him blush as she asks him questions in fluent, but hesitant, English. Dean’s teased him about it often enough, but he’s actually a little offended he doesn’t have his own posse of angels vying for his attention. They _stare_ enough; but they very rarely come close, and though he doesn’t exactly want them to, he also wonders why.

The angel he caught red-handed – maybe thirty years old, with long, wavy hair – catches sight of him later on and despite his best efforts to smile at her – _hey! It’s okay! I’ve been there! –_ she hides behind one of her brothers immediately and drags him alongside her into the nearest room, head ducked low.

He’s a little embarrassed himself, actually.  The whole thing seemed a lot more illicit than Cas gave it credit for; the angels seem so innocent, and even though Dean’s not dumb – he knows innocent people masturbate, for god’s sake – it jars harshly with his image of them, strange and sexless, and he isn’t sure how it makes him feel. Mostly it makes him think about Cas in ways he’s been trying to avoid – what would he think about, how would he look, alone like that, _doing_ that?

He goes in search of Castiel – seems he’s always doing that, these days – and finds him eventually on the roof, of all places.

Castiel, as always, doesn’t seem surprised to see him. He moves up when Dean comes to sit beside him.

All the other angels are asleep; they’ve gone to their respective rooms, and they’ve lain in their beds. Dean always seems to meet with Cas at night, after his brothers and sisters have absented themselves, and he’s starting to feel like it’s deliberate.

He doesn’t say anything when he sits down, content to just _be._ It’s been a long day – managing the angels makes for a _lot_ of long days – and if anyone is more tired than Dean and Sam, it’s Cas. He looks it, if only a little; today he’s in slate-grey slacks and white shirt, feet bare. He doesn’t wear shoes often, and Dean can often tell when he’s coming from the soft, sticky sound of his unclothed soles on the floors.

Out ahead of them, the bunker’s flat roof serving as an observation-post, wide, unmarked land is spread out; the whole place surrounding it is pretty much just a collection of fields, the houses few and far between. Dean guesses that it was chosen deliberately, to keep them from being conspicuous; but it’s a lonely sort of isolation, and sometimes he thinks they wouldn’t even know, out here, if the world ended.

Thing is, though, he and his brother are usually pretty involved in the apocalypse; someone would fill them in.

“Sam’s made a friend.” He says, and Castiel smiles.

“She’s really taken to him. I think he reminds her of Samson.”

“Bible-Samson? She knew him?”

“Watched him.” Castiel corrects, and Dean nods. Okay then.

“So how come they don’t like _me_?” He tries to sound like he’s joking, but it actually comes out kind of needy. There’s no need for Castiel to laugh so hard, though.

“They never stop talking about you.”  Castiel says, laughter tailing off. “They’re _fascinated_ by you.”

“By _me?”_

“Well.” Castiel looks at him, hesitant, then turns back to the glassy horizon. “By me and you.”

“Thought they’d be bored by you.”

“They are. They’re interested in me _and_ you.” He gestures gently with a hand, palm flat, fingers together; indicates the both of them in a sweeping motion. “Especially after my brother saw us in the library.”

“You and me, like-?”

“Our… closeness.”

“Oh.” Dean stops for a second, dumbfounded. “They talk to you about me?”

“All the time. They’re interested in how we became friends.” A pause. “And of course, curious about other things.”

“Right.” Dean pauses. With the bunker below them, the silence, it is as if they’re in some kind of negative space, like a dream; this is how it felt to be on the dock with Castiel, all that time ago. Completely away from everything else. Hidden. “Are there other things?”

Castiel looks at him. “Of course.” He says, blankly, and Dean nods.

“Right. You’re right.”

“Aren’t there?” Castiel sounds suddenly unsure, and Dean is twisting his hands together in his lap. He nods.

“Yeah, there are. Other things. Tons of other things.”

“Dean, please tell me you know what I’m talking about.” Castiel’s voice is so exasperated that Dean laughs, before he realises Castiel actually wants an answer.

“What _are_ we talking about?” He thinks he knows. He wants to be sure.

“About my feelings for you.” Castiel ventures, all the while fixing him with his level gaze. “And,” he adds, more carefully, “Yours for me.”

“They’re curious about that?”Dean chews on the inside of his mouth. “It’s never-“

“No, it hasn’t.”

“They can tell?”

“They’re very perceptive.” Castiel is actually _teasing_ him about it. His heart is pounding in his fucking chest, and Castiel is making fun of him. He doesn’t know where to put his hands.

His breath shudders in his chest. He looks away from Castiel’s face, and instead focuses on his own palms; he covers one hand with the other, twisting them together, fingers encircling his thumb, then letting go. “I didn’t think _you_ could even tell.”

“You should give my family a lot more credit.”

“Yeah. Definitely.” He can’t ask what he really wants to, so instead, he says, “What do they ask you about me?”

Castiel looks surprised. “Mostly they ask me how it happened.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I said I didn’t know. One day it wasn’t there, the next it was.” He looks at Dean’s hands, twisting, and reaches for his wrist. He holds them still. “It’s getting cold.” His hand is warm, though. “Do you want to go inside?”

Dean nods, but when he stands up his legs feel weird, like the air has changed; is thicker, somehow. He follows Castiel back into the bunker, down the flights of metal steps, back down into the depths, where their bedroom – Dean’s bedroom, really – is.

Castiel walks beside him in silence, but Dean is still at a loss; heart still punching a tattoo in his chest, hands still wringing. They’ve said it now, basically. The _thing._ But nothing has happened, and he wants it to, and at the same time he wishes no one had said anything, because he wasn’t prepared.

Was it that obvious? The thought terrifies him. Castiel’s brothers and sisters aren’t even used to being human, and they know.

Cas knows. Cas feels – _something._ What it is, they haven’t quite cleared up, yet.

When they reach the door to the bedroom, Dean follows Castiel inside. He heads straight for the bathroom; runs the tap on full, drowning out Castiel’s quiet pre-bed shuffling; washes his face, brushes his teeth.

Castiel is in the doorway, in his pyjamas, when Dean lifts his head to the mirror again.

“I thought something might change, if we talked.” Castiel says, and Dean looks at him through the mirror, catching sight of his own slack, dumbfounded face even as he looks at Castiel’s.

Castiel crosses the bathroom quickly – Dean turns to meet him, face still slightly damp from washing. Castiel’s feet slap on the tiles as he comes closer – but he stops just short of Dean, and though Dean feels slightly hemmed in, he’s a little disappointed.

It would be so much easier if Castiel would just do it; take the initiative, be up front about it; _this is a thing, this, you and me._

But he’s just as much a part of it, he supposes. Can’t expect Cas to do _all_ the work.

“Like what?” he says, like an idiot, and Castiel’s face says the same thing.

“Could you, for once in your life, _not_ be quite so difficult, please.”

Dean laughs, at that – half at the way Castiel looks like he’s on the verge of turning on his heel and storming out (some things never change) – half at how grade school this whole thing is turning out to be. “You’re my best friend. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“That’s very nice.” Castiel says, slowly. “You won’t.”

Dean crowds closer to him; Castiel stands there, waiting – but when Dean gets close enough he lifts his hands to his face again, pulls him closer, grunts softly just before he kisses him, fingers tightening around Dean’s ears.

Dean gives it a second before he starts laughing so hard he has to pull away – but Cas doesn’t look worried, or angry, or anything. He says, “It isn’t like I thought it would be.”

Dean hasn’t even got time to take it the wrong way, he just says, “I know.”, and lets Castiel pull him back against the doorframe.

It’s a second or two before they do it again; a brief, heavy moment where Dean is nudging his nose against Castiel’s cheek, as if debating how best to approach. He can’t really breathe. He worries that if he starts sucking in air, it’ll break the mood.

But he does it, eventually; hands holding onto Castiel’s forearms, Castiel making soft, hesitant noises of encouragement.

Castiel winds his arm out of his grip, and takes his hand, and that’s it; he’s gone.

He pulls away. “Are you gonna tell them about this?” he says, half-joking, and Castiel smiles.

“Maybe not.” He surprises Dean by leaning forward and kissing his cheek. His fingers interlace with Dean’s. “This might just be mine.” 


	4. Chapter 4

Dean rises from his bed at about four in the morning, his need to piss a desperate pressure that roused him from sleep. He slides to sit on the edge of the bed so that he can avoid standing on Castiel, sleeping on the floor; but the puddle of blankets and pillows next to Dean’s bed is empty, mussed, and the bathroom door casts a soft square of light from underneath.

He gets up, then, mostly out of curiosity; pads to the door and quietly knocks.

“Cas?”

There’s no response from the other side, but he can hear water, sloshing around. Part of him panics straightaway; he doesn’t do very well with Cas and water, not anymore, and even though it makes no sense, he has to swallow his terror for a moment. There’s a lengthy pause; Dean knocks, again, and says his name, but there is no response.

He’s just about to give it up, give him his privacy, when Castiel’s voice sounds through the door, thick and bleary.

“I’ll be out in a minute.” Quiet, and almost expressionless. Dean leans against the door for a moment, wondering if this is something he can do something about. Castiel says, next, “Dean. Go back to bed.” In such a defeated tone that Dean sighs, temple knocking against the wood as he slumps.

“Okay.” He can’t think of anything else to say; ‘be careful’ makes no sense.

He goes back to bed, instead, but he still needs to piss badly, and he lies awake until Castiel opens the door and goes to sleep again. Even in the thin light of dawn, he can see that Castiel’s hair is wet.

\---

Castiel gets up in the morning before Dean, but when he makes it to the kitchen, nothing really seems amiss; Castiel is in deep conversation with a brother of his, and when Dean enters the kitchen he lifts his head, and smiles. He’s busy, though, so Dean just makes himself a quick cup of coffee and leaves. He wants to do something before he goes; go over and kiss him, maybe; something intimate, and casual; but they’re not quite ‘there’ yet, and they both know it.

Still, the thought of kissing him fills his chest with a warm, liquid elation; he smiles all the way to the library, looking for Sam.

Sam, predictably, is on the internet again. He’s been keeping a close eye on the news for any signs of the angels making an impact, but thus far the world (or America, at least) seems to be coping with uncharacteristic grace; or maybe it  _is_ characteristic of people, in general, to panic whenever nothing is wrong, and when something truly weird happens, accept it with nothing more than a cursory nod. In any case nothing really seems to have changed, and the media doesn’t call them angels, but rather refers to them in a variety of different ways, all amounting to ‘new arrivals’, as if they were babies and not fully grown men and women, wearing the faces and bodies of people who went missing (some, hundreds of years ago).

Sam looks up when he sees him, apparently unconcerned by the fact that there is a whole  _cluster_ of angels sitting around him, all in various states of absorption. The dark-haired, older angel is at his elbow, as per usual; but there are four new additions to the troupe, all sitting around Sam as if he were leading a seminar.

They clear a chair for Dean, when he comes close; they don’t exactly  _skitter_ away but they definitely get a little twitchy, and the space beside Sam is available quickly, as if in deference to his status. The idea of there being any kind of hierarchy weirds him out; but Sam  _is_ his brother, he reasons. To them, maybe it makes sense.

“Hey, uh.” He looks at the angels, afraid of speaking like they aren’t there; they’re so mute sometimes, talking together in their private language, that he sometimes forgets they understand every word he says. “What’re you doing?”

Sam positively  _beams._ “I –  _we -_  got bored of research, so they’re telling me stuff about what they wanna do, you know; when they leave.”

Dean stops stock still for a second, considering. He honestly hadn’t thought about it; the idea of these trembling, inquisitive new humans being thrown into the pull and thrust of the ‘real world’ – it seems impossible. He sits down beside Sam; the angel on his left has buttoned his shirt perfectly, but the sleeves hang long and large over his hands, like he hasn't thought to roll them up. Castiel will probably do it for him, later, if he catches sight of it; he tucks their hair behind their ears, as well. When he doesn’t think Dean is looking, he sometimes kisses them, gently; a quick peck to the lips, or nose, or cheek. It tugs at Dean in unprecedented ways. “Oh.” He says, and looks to the angels, who avoid his eyes. He’s getting real fucking tired of the cold shoulder, however much Castiel tries to explain it away. “What’re you guys gonna do?”

They don’t answer, immediately. One of them leans over to her brother, beside her, and whispers something so low that it could be enochian or English; either way, Dean wouldn’t have caught it. Once the silence stretches too long, Sam clears his throat.

“Ruroi,” He nods to the dark-haired angel beside him, “Said she wanted to work in a library. Maybe go to college.”

Dean almost laughs. It’s so  _weird;_ surely the world is closed to them, as it is to Dean? How can you talk about going to  _college_ when you’ve lived for thousands of years; when you’ve been unceremoniously dumped from your cloudy perch to wallow in the mud with the rest of them?

He says nothing, though; just nods.

Going around the circle, eventually Sam explains all of them; some of them want family, others just love. Some of them have specific career paths in mind; one of them says he just wants to  _go everywhere,_ and Dean can at least understand where he’s coming from, with that.

But when they’ve gone around everyone, he’s left to wonder; what does Castiel want?

All of them have desires, tangible and strong and  _hopeful;_ all of them want for things, large and small; perfect and imperfect, trivial and unattainable, both. He would hazard that  _all_ of them do; not just the ones who have gravitated towards Sam like satellites, revolving around Sam’s energy, his light.

Sam seems cheered up, just being around them; before Cas came back he was melancholy, searching for a hunt, insisting he felt fine. Even now he’s weak, and pale; most days he’s got a cough that wracks him, and Dean is still terrified that whatever took hold of him during the trials will flare up again.

But when they’re around him like disciples; eyes on him interested,  _adoring;_ Sam takes to it with ease.

Dean’s known for a long time that Sam was built to lead, not to play second fiddle. But leading comes in different forms, and he wonders what the difference is, in a way, between leadership like Sam does it (affectionate, firm,  _joyous_ ) and fatherhood. Wonders if that's what Sam wants. 

With Cas, the immediate ‘big brother’ vibe makes sense; he’s their family. He wants to protect them. But Sam has a rapport with them, too, and Dean is the only one left with the disconnect, and part of him still doesn’t know  _why._

Sure, they ask about him, but they won’t talk to him; won’t look him in the eye. It almost seems chemical. Can they smell it on him? Something dirty, something undeserving; something  _wrong?_

He wonders if sulphur can sustain, in the skin, for so long. If their senses are heightened; if they just know him better than other people do.

Sam, for all his demon blood, is  _good._ Dean’s always known. His brother is good down to his marrow, good in his atoms, and Dean …Dean might not be. And maybe these angels can tell.

But it’s not worth thinking about; these angels aren’t Zachariah, aren’t Raphael or Gabriel or any of the other terrifying creatures he’s met in the past. They’re different; they have the capacity to be something other than what was allotted them at ‘birth’.

Dean leans over Sam’s shoulder, peering at the laptop as he shows Dean the new legislations being drawn up; the angels are to be given new identities, social security numbers, everything. After extensive deliberation, the government decided it wasn’t  _like_ normal immigration, so all of the standard procedures were pretty much moot; better just to give them all an I.D , let them choose their own names, and send them on their way. As Sam fills him in, the angels grow bored and leave them, chattering quietly amongst themselves.

But one angel has stayed behind, and Dean recognises him; his vessel slight, and young; the same angel who had hung back in the library while he was with Cas; who had pulled him away, and stared at Dean from the mouth of the library, fingertips ghosting against the doorframe.

The angel – Diri, if he remembers rightly – speaks, after a time, and Dean and Sam look at him in surprise.

His voice is hesitant, the vowels strange. “Where will Castiel go?” he says, and Dean stares at him across the table.

“What do you mean?”

“Will he stay here with you, or find his own way, with us?”

Dean has no answer. His fingertips tingle and ache; his throat grows dry. The angel’s eyes on him are level and expectant. “I don’t know.” He says honestly, and Diri looks dissatisfied with his answer.

“He should be free.” He says quietly, and Dean immediately feels his hackles rise, rage gathering in the pit of his stomach. He opens his mouth, but Sam lays a hand on his shoulder, and he thinks better of it.

Diri looks at them both for a long moment, his expression neutral. Eventually, as if bored, or perhaps feeling that he’s said all that needs to be said, he wanders away. As soon as he’s gone, Sam speaks.

“He’s right, you know.” His voice is wary, and Dean doesn’t want to listen to him.

“I’m not keeping him in a fucking  _cell.”_

“I didn’t say you were.” Sam retorts, easy and calm. Dean hates him for it. “I just mean, like, he’s new too. Just like they are.” He pauses, as if trying to find the right words, tiptoeing around Dean like you would a wild animal. “Maybe he needs to decide for himself what’s good for him.”

His stomach twists painfully; all impulses tell him to just get up; leave the conversation behind.

“He’s not human. He doesn’t know  _how_ to be human. He’ll die or fuck up or get lost and I don’t – I don’t want that on my conscience.” He spits, and it’s not even very convincing to himself.

Sam sighs heavily. “Dean, I don’t think  _any_ of us know how.” He shrugs, and his eyes are sad, but he looks at Dean with conviction. “If this is what he needs to do, then this is what he needs.” He pauses, and looks down at his hands. “I love him, too. I’ll miss him. But if this is what he wants, then who the hell are we?”

“His family.”

“ _That’s_ his family.” Sam says, indicating the doorway, where the angels have gone. “We’re his friends. With us, he has a choice.”

Dean gets it. He does. But the idea of just letting him  _go_ seems like a hundred thousand steps backwards from where they are, and he doesn’t  _want_ Cas to leave him in the distance. Doesn’t want Sam to move on, either. He doesn’t want to be alone.

He leaves his seat behind, getting up; Sam makes a noise as if to call him back, but lets him go.

“I’m going for a drive.” He says, “We need milk.” A stupid excuse, and a thin one. He gets down the hallways and into the car so fast that he barely even remembers the journey at all.

\--

The bed dips when Dean sits on the edge of it, and Castiel rolls over.

It’s his turn with the mattress tonight, and despite the fact that things between them are  _developing,_ Dean doesn’t want to cross a line; but standing in the grocery store had awakened in him a strange, aching solitude. With the milk carton clutched in one hand he’d stood under the halogen lights in a line of seven or eight people and still he’d felt horribly, painfully  _separate_.

But in this room, on his mattress, like  _this;_ leaning down to kiss him, swallowing Castiel’s surprised, pleased noise; he doesn’t feel it. The creeping darkness, the one he feels on a fairly regular basis, is gone, and replaced by the excitement of this new thing, this novelty. He’s moving, touching with purpose before he even really realises it. He leans over Cas and kisses him, his mouth, his jaw; he leans his forehead against his neck, and smells him, sharp and overwhelmingly human; body-wash and sweat. Shampoo. Nothing special, nothing new; they probably smell exactly the same; but even so it is  _Cas,_ and he’s  _here,_ and Dean’s hands fold around his waist with ease.

“Dean.” He says softly, and there’s an air of accusation about it; Dean pulls away and looks at him.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. M’fine.” The words trip off his tongue so easily. “Are  _you?”_

Castiel nods. “Fine.” His hands drift around the hem of Dean’s shirt. “I’ve been thinking.” He says, and he gets his hands more firmly underneath Dean’s shirt, palming the skin around his hips with a deftness and a surety that he brings to almost everything. Dean’s hands, by contrast, shake.

“What about?” Dean murmurs, and takes the opportunity to sit astride his waist; he undoes the first button of Castiel’s shirt, and when he laughs, takes that as an invitation to continue, kissing his way down his chest as it is exposed.

“The future.” Castiel murmurs, sounding half-drugged when Dean reaches his navel, and sucks a kiss below it.

Dean stills, and moves his hands to push Castiel’s button-down shirt from his shoulders, Cas sitting up to help. He stays sat up when it’s gone; lifts a hand, and threads it into the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck. Looks at him with care. “I’ve barely seen you today.”

“I was with Sam. I went for groceries, too.”

“You should have told me; I would have gone with you.”

“s’okay.” He shifts in Castiel’s lap; enjoys the soft intake of breath, the fact that he can  _feel_ Cas’ cock swelling beneath him. “You miss me?”

Castiel doesn’t dignify that with a response; instead his probing fingertips move to lift Dean’s t-shirt up, over his head, and off; then return to his lower back, fingertips dipping below the waistband of his jeans. “Is this okay?” he asks, voice a murmur; Dean nods, and kisses him again; reaches blindly behind him to take Castiel’s wrist and guide it to the front of his jeans, pushing his clothed, rapidly hardening cock against Castiel’s palm. His own breath stutters, but he’s not even embarrassed; not really.

Castiel pulls back from the kiss, and watches Dean’s face, holding eye-contact. He undoes the button on his jeans; pulls down his fly. Smiles at him before he takes Dean’s cock in hand, and Dean closes his eyes.

He’s only found out recently that Castiel even knew what this  _was;_ he knows it because he’s done it to  _himself,_ and the thought of Castiel doing this – wrapping a fist loosely around his own cock, stroking himself base to tip, slowly, attention lavish and sure – makes a spike of arousal shoot through Dean so sharply that the noise he makes in the back of his throat seems wrenched from the base of his spine.

Castiel drops his head against Dean’s shoulder, mouth open, breath hot on his skin. He’s ruthless; even with Dean canting his hips into the circle of his fist, Castiel pulls him closer with a hand shoved roughly down the back of Dean’s boxers, and traps his own hand and Dean’s cock between their stomachs, knuckles rasping at his flesh with each stroke up and down.

“Cas,  _jesus- “_ he half-laughs, surprised; he can feel Castiel’s own erection pushing at his thigh, but when he goes for it with his hands Castiel just pulls him closer so he can’t, hand still keeping its even pace, Dean’s breath getting harder and harder to pull in with each subsequent stroke. He deliberately grinds in Castiel’s lap, and when he does it right the first time Castiel outright  _groans,_ turning his head to kiss Dean’s neck. Dean laughs again – it was  _loud,_ and someone is going to come burst in on them, if they’re not careful - the door isn’t locked - and then he gasps as he comes without warning over Castiel’s fist, the feeling surging up and over him with almost no pretence whatsoever. He makes a noise on the end of his laugh, like he’s been punched in the gut; Castiel continues to stroke him though, slower, gentler, until Dean is an oversensitised mess in his lap, thighs shaking with the effort it takes not to just slump against him.

Castiel pulls back from him and he’s breathing hard, too; he slurs his mouth over Dean’s sloppily, then fumbles between them to get at his own pants, splaying apart the zipper with his fingers and unceremoniously shoving his hand between them to wrap around his own cock with his hand, which is covered with Dean’s come. He makes noise, rolling into the movement of his fist, and his breath catches when Dean reaches for his neck to pull them together again; he fits one hand to Castiel’s nape, the other joining Castiel’s hand around his cock, and they move together, Dean feeling sated and fluid and lazy, the sound of Castiel’s breathing getting harsher and harsher before the space between them grows warm, and wet, and Castiel says, just,  _“Dean.”_ And sighs.

There’s something so lovely about him, the way he moves; even wiping come off his hand against the bedsheets, Dean is drawn to him; the stretch of his hand, his parted mouth, still trying to calm his breathing. He laughs, and Castiel looks at him and laughs, too; and kisses him, his damp hand wrapping around Dean’s elbow, pulling him into a weird half-embrace.

Dean thinks he should get off him, maybe; go clean up, get changed; but it would be so much easier just to shuck his boxers and jeans and lie in the bed with him; fall asleep beside him, and get to watch the movements that Castiel makes when he drops into sleep. His hands going slack; his lashes an inkstain on his cheeks.

Eventually he pulls away – clambers off him – but he climbs out of his jeans and is just about to move away when Castiel pulls him down again, and shuffles close.

“It’s fine.” Is all he says, on the crest of a yawn, and he doesn’t let go of Dean’s arm, so Dean figures that’s permission enough to stay

\----

He wakes, for the second night in a row, at the fucking crack of dawn. The sheets have been peeled back; Cas is gone. The bathroom is alight, again.

Dean doesn’t get up, discouraged by the night before. He waits until Castiel crawls back into bed, then whispers into the darkness between them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” Castiel mumbles, blurry.

“Cas.” he pauses. Nothing from the other pillow. “Talk to me.”

“I’m fine.”

Castiel crowds up to him again, and tucks himself close to Dean’s chest; but Dean can’t get to sleep, now, and Castiel’s face is damp, pressed against his skin.

He’s just about to close his eyes and attempt to stop fucking  _worrying_ about  _everything,_ for once, when Castiel’s hand curls around his, in the dark.

He hears; a strange, thin mumble from below his chin, “Dean,” a pause. Dean waits, with bated breath.  “I think I have to leave.” 


	5. Chapter 5

Dean doesn’t even roll over and look at him; he pulls himself out of Castiel’s arms and leaves him in the dark, warm room, slamming the door shut.

For a moment, he stands there in the empty hallway, hoping that Castiel will slam out after him; but he doesn’t, and in fact, nothing happens at all.

Feet cold on the floor, stomach itchy with dried come, he can feel the prickle of sweat against his lower back; against his neck, where Cas was breathing, just moments before.

It’s childish to storm out – Dean thinks his days of justifiably _storming_ out of anywhere ended when he hit sixteen – but whatever, he figures, going to the kitchen to grab his jacket off the back of a chair. Cas has left him enough times; maybe he needs to find out what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

When he gets outside he doesn’t really want to go anywhere, anymore. The sun is rising on the horizon, thin peeking sliver of light, and everything is grey and muted in colour. His feet are bare; the ground is chilled with frost.

He goes and sits in the car; puts the key in the ignition, and turns it on, but makes no move to actually start it up.

Now that he’s outside, the beating of his heart calms; only when he thinks directly of what Castiel said to him does it start flaring again, smashing against the inside of his chest.

He’s so angry, all the time, at the people he loves, and it _hurts_. He thinks it would be so much easier, much easier, if he were like his Dad, sometimes; _really_ like him.

John didn’t let people in, like Dean does; would never let someone like Cas close. Never even really let his _sons_ close. Maybe it was better; a better way to be.

He turns on the radio, but there’s nothing on there that he really wants to listen to. He turns it off again, and eventually he wanders back inside; sits on the couch flipping through weird early-morning TV programmes until everyone else starts to wake.

\----

Really, it’s just like any other day. He starts breakfast; Sam wanders in, and helps. Eighteen breakfasts (not counting Sam’s and Dean’s and Cas’) is a lot, and the angels have started making requests; Dean’s usually cool with that, but this morning he feels reluctant to cater to their demands, and is inches from telling them to make their own damned food when Castiel appears in the doorway, looking wan.

Castiel says his name, from across the room, and Dean doesn’t even turn around. His knuckles are white on the frying pan, and little pinpricks of oil are jumping to sting him all over his bare forearms, but he doesn’t move; doesn’t respond.

He hears the soft pad of Castiel’s retreating footsteps and lifts his head to catch Sam looking at him with the deepest expression of pity on his face.

Sam walks over and elbows Dean out of the way, taking the pan from his hands. He takes the cooked bacon from it; puts it onto a plate, adds more to the pan. Dean lets him. “What happened?” Sam asks him, and he shrugs. Wants to say something petty and childish, but somehow that seems wrong. He doesn’t _feel_ petty and childish; he feels _injured._ He thinks he might even have a right to.

“It’s okay.” He says, instead, and Sam hums a little noise.

“Are you sure? That was… really awkward.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Sam sighs deeply, exhaustedly, but hands Dean the plate of bacon instead of saying anything more. “Take this out to ‘em.”

Dean takes it wordlessly and moves to the dining room, its long table already flocked with angels (who take well, he has learned, to scheduled meals). He drops it unceremoniously in front of them, and doesn’t even have to look around to check if Cas is there; he knows he is. He lifts his head and, lo and behold; he’s perched beside a sister, not talking to her, just looking at Dean. Which, in turn, makes _everyone_ turn and look at Dean.

He frowns, and leaves for the kitchen again. When the next round of bacon is done, he makes Sam take it out. 

Really, he’s lucky the Bunker is so big. Busy with his duties to his brothers and sisters, Castiel only really attempts to find him when he has a break, and during those times, Dean makes sure he’s out of sight. He dreads the night; the time when everyone else is gone, when Cas will know where to find him; but for now, he’s content to walk around, picking up after Castiel’s brothers and sisters.

He finds himself being short with them all day; he’s in a bad mood anyway, obviously, but they get under his skin with their wariness, treating him like a fucking pariah for reasons they won’t even fucking _explain_ to him. He tries to go for a shower and finds a bunch of them, four of them, just hanging out in there, chattering away. Cas has been trying to encourage them to speak English, but they mostly refuse, especially when they’re together. Like they’re in some sort of fucking secret club, they look up when Dean enters, and fall silent.

“Alright, get out.” He says, and for a moment they look at him blankly. “Get out.” He repeats, and the angels rise to their feet, and look at him; one defiant, the other three hesitant, cautious. They always look afraid that someone’s going to hurt them, and Dean wonders where the hell they got that idea, when he’s been bathing and feeding and generally nannying them for the past two weeks without a single fucking complaint.

The four of them look at him. One was sitting on the toilet seat, one on the floor, two in the tub, their feet bare. On any other day maybe he’d have found them endearing; the two angels in the bathtub had the soles of their feet pressed together, like he and Sammy used to do, when they were kids.

Instead, he just tells them to go, again; they file out in silence, giving him a wide berth, as if he’s going to strike.

He takes the most resentful shower of his life, comes out feeling no better, and as he walks down the hallway towel-drying his hair, his shoulder collides harshly with one of the smaller angels, knocking her sideways.

\---

“Will you listen to me, now?”

Dean jumps. “Jesus!” he turns to look at where Castiel has just fucking _appeared,_ in the doorway of the living room. Dean had assumed he was safe; he had the TV on, some old rerun of _Grey’s Anatomy,_ and Cas was away somewhere; Sam in the library. There’s a couple of angels in here with Dean, but they haven’t spoken; one of them is Sam’s friend, the dark haired one, who apparently has grown tired of him, at least for now; the other, curled against her side, can’t be older than a teenager; she’s mostly chinless, and has long, straight hair. Dean’s just been sitting there in silence, watching whatever they want to flip to; they’re fussy, though, and change the channel a lot, often when Dean was _just_ getting into something. They sit as far from Dean as they can, on the couch. Dean tries not to hate them for it.

When Castiel speaks, his sisters turn, too; they lose interest when they see that he’s speaking to Dean.

“Do you have to sneak up on me like that?” he says irritably, and Castiel snorts with undisguised derision.

“Since you’ve been avoiding me all day, yes, I think I do.” His mouth is drawn in a thin line. “Will you talk to me, now?”

Dean contemplates just flipping him the bird and turning back to the TV, but resists. “Depends.” He murmurs, and Castiel says nothing; he lifts his hand, and touches his forehead, like he’s in pain.

“Please.”

Dean looks at him properly; how tired he seems. There’s a tiny stain on his shirt front, red, and Dean doesn’t know if it’s blood or not; he hasn’t really been paying attention today. There’s a band-aid wrapped around one of his fingers. Dean sighs deeply, and pushes himself up off the couch, almost immediately regretting it. “Fine. What is it?”

Castiel looks at his sisters, comfortable on the couch, and before he answers he goes over to them; touches the elder on the head with one hand, mumbles something to her in a soft, exhausted voice. She replies; he kisses her forehead with a tight, weary dip forward. The younger angel against her side must have fallen asleep; Castiel threads a hand through her hair, just briefly.

“Not in front of them.” He says, as if Dean is going to fight him on it; Dean just nods, and without waiting for him, goes to the kitchen. He leans against the counter, by the sink; arms folded, looking down. He picks at a spot between the floorboards with the toe of his shoe.

For a moment, they just stand there in silence. Castiel seems content to just _look_ at him until he says something, but Dean doesn’t really know where to start.

“You’re angry.” Castiel says, and Dean barks a laugh so harsh that Castiel actually flinches.

“No shit.” He says, but offers nothing more. Castiel is sighing again; he starts to pace, and threads a hand through his hair, then shoves both his hands into the pockets of his pants. He looks careless today, rumpled; the shirt isn’t one they found in the Headquarters; it might be one of Sam’s. His hair is a mess, but that’s not really anything new.

“Please understand.” Castiel says, and Dean looks at him.

“I can’t do this anymore.” he’s imagined saying it, so many times, but never imagined Castiel to look so surprised.

“Can’t do what?”

“This. You. Any of it. I don’t know.” He looks away. The kitchen seems hopelessly wide. “Fuck.” It echoes off the floorboards. He lets a pause stretch out between them, then says, “I knew this would happen.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dean almost smiles. Of course. “D’you know why this never happened before? You know -?” he gestures between them with a hand.

Castiel says nothing; he visibly swallows, and Dean watches the line of it move down his throat.

“You’ve never been here long enough before.”

“That’s not my fault, Dean.” His voice is sharp with frustration, and Dean clicks his tongue; laughs, nods.

“No, I know. I know.” He pauses. “It’s true, though.”

“I wanted –“ Castiel begins, then falters. He steps a little closer, but not much; lingers by the kitchen island, thumb moving back and forth against the corner of the counter.

“I know.” He says, again, “Me fucking too.” He draws breath, then drops the words. “You always _leave.”_ It comes out too plaintive, too desperate; he wants to pull it back in, make Castiel stop frowning at him like he’s being unreasonable. Maybe he is.

“It’s never my choice.”

“Oh, fuck _you.”_ He spits, and Castiel’s frown deepens. “You could have stayed if you fucking wanted to. _Really_ wanted to. Maybe not every fucking time, but after Stull-“

It’s Castiel’s turn to snort, the noise rolling from him. “After Stull I was at war.”

There’s nothing really to add to that; they’ve been over it all already. Dean just says, “I missed you so much.”

“ _Dean._ ” Before now, Dean has wondered at how little Falling seems to have changed him; he looks the same, his movements are the same; the cadence of his voice, the shifts of his hands; all are equal to the Castiel Dean knew before the fall, and in six months of so much outer change it seems insane to think he hasn’t been edited at all.

But now Dean’s looking more carefully, and he sees the way Castiel’s eyes close; his hands ball into fists, his shoulders raise. He remembers Castiel running off to the fucking bathroom in the middle of the night, and thinks of all the reasons that Dean, himself, has done the same thing in his time.

None of them are good.

“Do you _want_ to go?” he says, trying for reasonable, terrified of the answer. Castiel lowers his gaze; says nothing. “Fuck.” What else is there to say? “God _damn_ it.” His voice shakes. He tries not to be loud because everyone will be going to sleep, now; because Castiel’s sisters are content in the next room, on the couch; but volume winds out of him and Castiel just keeps staring at him, and he doesn’t even look _sorry._

“They need me more than you do.”

“What have they ever done for you?” It’s spiralling away from him, the anger and grief inside him, but he can’t stop. “They’re not even your fucking family, Cas, after all they’ve done to you-“

Castiel finally, finally starts getting angry. “How _dare_ you-“

“It’s true!” Dean shouts back, and Castiel is visibly holding himself back at this point. “They’ve treated you like shit all this time, and now, what, you’re wiping their fucking asses for them? They’re not _babies,_ Cas, they’re hundreds of years old!”

“They’re alone!” Castiel shouts back at him, and there is a noise from the next room like movement, and both of them turn their heads to the doorway, but no one comes through. “They’re alone.” Castiel repeats, no less loud, “They’re alone and I, of all people, know what that feels like, and I won’t let them make the mistakes that I made.” Castiel stays where he is, but he looks Dean right in the eyes as he talks. “You say they don’t deserve me, but I don’t deserve _them.”_ He pronounces the words with such reluctance that they seem a physical weight, spiralling to the ground at Dean’s feet. “You’re my best friend.” He says, somewhat incongruously, Dean thinks; and, then, “but that doesn’t mean you know all that I am. All I’ve done.” He pauses. “This decision is mine to make, for once. _Finally.”_

“What you did to them wasn’t your fucking fault.”

“That’s not what you used to think. You were right, then. We could have fixed it, perhaps. I might have swallowed my pride, done something different. Avoided this mess.” He shakes his head, just briefly. “Now all you’re doing is letting your feelings for me cloud your judgement.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He fumbles for words; deflates. “It’s just- it’s not _fair.”_

Castiel laughs, but it’s bitter. When Dean looks at him, he’s smiling. “What _is?”_

 Dean’s chest feels so tight he almost can’t breathe. Again, he wonders if it might just be easier to cut this off; walk out, calm down, ignore it. Let him go. Forget him, eventually. It might happen. But talking about the past, talking about how they do this, over and over and over, gives him pause.

He walks over to Castiel and touches his hand, then withdraws from it. “Would you come back?”

Castiel hums quietly, and Dean’s skin feels oversensitive and alive, too hot, too cold, at once. “I don’t know.” Is his only answer, and Dean’s breath comes out harsh, cut off. It’s not a sob; it’s dry; but it’s just as embarrassing, just as involuntary, and Dean can barely look at him, as a result.

“You should be selfish.” He says, disappointment colouring his voice.

“So should you.” Castiel counters, and Dean looks up at him, then, and offers him the tiniest, most ironic smile he can muster.

There’s something almost horrible about the way they care for each other, and it is so evident there in the kitchen, that Dean can physically _feel_ it. He feels unlucky, and desperate, and embarrassed by pretty much everything he’s said; there’s a tight knot of anger and sadness just below his ribs, coiled, and he wonders if that’ll ever go away; it’s been there so long.

He wants to reach out and touch him; tries to remember that he’s allowed now, that he _can;_ but the distance has opened between them again, and it is worse than before.

“Imagine if it were Sam.” Castiel says softly, and Dean shakes his head.

“Me and Sam aren’t _healthy.”_

“You can be.”

“What about _you?”_ he looks at him again, and Castiel’s mouth is twisted.

“I’m not important. It doesn’t matter about me.”

“Matters to us.” He says, and Castiel his mouth curves with guilty pleasure.

“What would I have done without you?” He muses, sounding almost awestruck. Dean’s hands are shoved in the pockets of his jeans, and Castiel can’t reach his fingers; he closes a hand around his forearm, instead. “You’ve loved me so dearly.” He’s smiling. Dean’s not. “I don’t know how I missed that so many times.”

“So you’re going.” He tries to ignore the pressure of Castiel’s thumb against the underside of his wrist; the soft press of it against the tendons, the way he can _just_ feel his heart, beating.

“Most likely.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

Dean lifts his head to look at him, and thinks he must look so pathetic; face drawn, brows together. Pulse _racing._ Always left behind, always lost. Always begging.

Castiel leans forward; Dean forces himself not to flinch away; and he kisses Dean’s cheek, high on the rise of his cheekbone, below his eye. Dean closes his eyes before he finishes, and they are quiet in the kitchen together, leaning against the counter; Castiel’s warm hand wrapped around his wrist, Dean’s palms sweating in the pockets of his jeans. With him; but alone, again, as well.

\---

‘Soon’ turns out to be about a week and a half.

Dean drifts, waiting. They don’t really put a date on it, but as time passes; as the angels start making their own breakfasts in the morning, watching Dean and then imitating him to a T; as they become more independent, more opinionated with every day, Dean realises dimly that this thing can’t last much longer.

He and Cas talk, and they touch, but not a lot. They sleep in the same bed; Dean wakes a couple of mornings in a row with Castiel snoring on his arm, and it is as if the world beneath him has dropped out of sight, and he is falling.

He tries to force himself to understand, to accept it; to be thankful that at least this time he got a fucking warning; but Castiel makes him laugh more and more as time goes on, and all the hesitant silence in the world can’t stop it feeling _right_ when he enters a room, and Castiel looks up, and just _smiles._

The night after Castiel tells him he’s leaving he is desperate; crowds him against the doorframe, then against the bed; kisses him harsh and ragged and furious. Dean slides his clothes from his body, settles between his thighs and all but swallows his cock down, lips bruised and wide, Castiel’s legs wrapped around his head, a hand fisted in his hair, crying out.

 Stupid to think maybe it would convince him to stay; but he tries it, last-ditch, nonetheless.

Dean falls asleep first; hands wrapped around Castiel’s back, forehead dug against his shoulder; but Castiel has to shrug him off again, getting up in the middle of the night, and when morning rolls around they have separated entirely, both occupying different sides of the bed.

\---

“So how’re you doing this?” Dean asks him; they’re hefting the angel’s stuff outside, a bag each, cheap things bought from the town nearest to the bunker.

“We’ll take the train.” It’s weird, like they’re going camping; a toothbrush each, a bundle of clothes. Castiel himself has little; he accepts Sam’s offer of cash, but takes nothing else but a couple of shirts, some pants; a knife, and a pistol, upon Dean’s insistence (and Sam, reasonably backing him up.) Before the angels go they tattoo them all, almost an afterthought; demon possession and its possibilities had all but slipped Dean’s mind until a couple of nights before they left, and when he remembered again it was too late to do anything but get his old homemade gun out again, and apologise for the pain.

Sam did Cas’; Dean refused. Most of their tattoos have stopped swelling now, and are starting to harden and scab over, and itch. Even Castiel, usually the picture of a Good Example, sometimes rubs at it through his shirt with the heel of his hand.

He and Sam decided his back was best for it; it’s between his shoulder blades, but Dean hasn’t really seen it. He actually hasn’t ever seen Castiel entirely naked, which strikes him as odd when they wake in the morning before he leaves.

Dean was lying down, looking at the long curve of Cas’ back as he sat on the edge of the bed; the thought occurred to him, and then slipped away.

The gaggle of angels shift uncomfortably when they’re finally ready; everything is a mess of finding shoes for everyone, Cas included; of washing and drying everyone, because no one is sure when they’ll next get a hot shower. Dean’s slowly learning all their names, and knows some of them better than others, but he has nothing like the camaraderie with them that Sam does, and his little brother is despondent, wilting, when they all stand on the verge outside of the bunker, bags in their hands.

Dean’s embarrassed; Cas keeps looking at him, and they haven’t kissed that morning. Maybe they should have, but now it’s too late, and he won’t do it in front of his brother.

Sam says goodbye to every single one of them and they greet him eagerly; Ruroi, Sam’s blatant favourite, is close to tears when she hugs him goodbye, and murmurs something in his ear that makes him laugh good-naturedly and lift her off the ground a little, squeezing her tight.

Dean lifts a hand to them, awkward.

 Sam says goodbye to Cas, last; reminds him to keep in touch, to visit, to come _back._ He hugs him too, and says, “We’re a mess without you, you know that.” With the edge of a smile on his face, but Castiel doesn’t laugh; he looks oddly touched, lips tilted in barest of frowns. He says thankyou in the smallest voice Dean has ever heard him use, and then both of them look at Dean.

“See you around.” He ventures, and Sam looks like he wants to kick him.

The night before, Castiel slept curled next to him, his back against Dean’s side. Dean lay awake trying to imagine how this was going to go; what he’d say, how he’d feel. Now that it’s happening he can’t really find the words and despite himself, he’s still so _angry_ that it’s enough of an effort not to haul off and hit Castiel, let alone manage something heartfelt.

Dean lingers, leaning by the side of the entrance to the bunker, and then lifts himself to his feet, and walks over. He breathes in deep, standing in front of Castiel, and is just about to murmur something – _bye, Cas –_ or worse, when Castiel lunges forward, cutting him off, and hugs him.

Despite everything, Dean doesn’t think they’ve actually done this since _purgatory,_ and it shocks him into silence.

He lets himself, just briefly, press his head against Castiel’s shoulder. They pull apart.

“Don’t be a stranger.” He says, looking at the ground, and Castiel nods. He reaches for Dean’s sleeve, but Dean looks at him – a warning – and he pulls away.

“I’ll try.”

The rest is an awkward fumble; all of them are going to walk to the nearest town, thankfully not _too_ far away. Castiel laughs when Sam offers them a ride in the car – there are _far_ too many of them, of course, to fit – and instead he leads them down the road like a weird Boy Scout troupe leader, reminding them to be careful, all the way.

As soon as Castiel’s back is turned, Dean goes inside.

Back in the bunker the place seems so eerily silent that Dean finds himself talking louder than he needs to. “Coffee?” he half-shouts to Sam, and Sam nods, and sits himself at the kitchen counter. He whistles, low.

“Weird without them.” He says, and Dean nods not at him, but at the coffee mugs.

“Yeah.”

“Cas said he’d call, once he gets a phone.”

“Cool.”

“Are you guys okay?”

Dean brings him the coffee and sits looking at his own. “Yeah, we’re fine.”

The bunker echoes with quiet; _thuds_ with it. Dean and his brother sit, mostly in silence, and the place seems so much bigger, so much _emptier,_ than it did, before. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (this is part 8, on tumblr)!

Up in Minnesota, two months later, Dean gets a text from a number he doesn’t recognise.

_Are you going to talk to him_

For a minute, he stares. He’s sitting in the car at the time, waiting for Sam to finish pissing and mulling over magazines, so they can get going again. It’s a grey, unremarkable day; the station they’re at is in a small, residential neighbourhood, and the only reason they’re up here is because Garth heard _rumours_ of another way to close the gates of hell.

Thusfar, it’s been a mother fucking bust; a parade of mystified faces, evangelical nutjobs, and awkward encounters with people who know way too much about FBI badges than they should (when the fuck did everybody become an expert? That’s what Dean wants to know).

Not without wariness, he texts back, _Who the fuck is this?_

_This keyboard doesn’t have the characters required to spell my name_

For god’s sake.

_Cas?_

If it _is_ Cas, it’s about fucking time. Since he left the bunker there’s been nothing from him, not even a blip, and Dean gets more and more restless (and, according to Sam, harder to live with) every single day.

_His brother. Are you going to talk to him_

Dean looks out of the window and catches sight of Sam, _still_ apparently weighing the merits of _Marie Claire_ and _Cosmo_.

In a move which is probably more testament to this parade of bullshit they’ve had these past few days than it is to his feelings for Cas, Dean texts back, _only if he talks to me first,_ and then shuts the phone off out of pure spite.

He sits in the car, leaning against the window, waiting for Sam to return. Storm clouds are gathering overhead, which is just fucking _perfect_ because the wipers haven’t worked since Iowa, and he hasn’t had a chance to look at them before.

Sam gets back, a copy of _New Scientist_ slung under one arm, and looks at Dean blankly from the passenger seat once he’s swung himself inside, magazine already open in his hands.

“What the hell happened while I was gone?”

“Nothing.” He says, and Sam raises a critical eyebrow, but hums his assent. “Where next?”

“’Nother priest.”

“ _Great.”_

\---

He does, of course, turn the phone on again, but this turns out to feel like more of a mistake than turning it off; there’s no missed calls, no texts, no nothing. In the motel room that night, Sam already asleep, he sits up in bed, knees tenting the blankets, and holds the phone cradled in his hands, trying to will it through pure brainpower to _do something._

Maybe it’s all the frigging psychics they’ve seen lately, giving him hope in the power of concentrated thought, but in any case, the phone doesn’t ring.

He swallows his pride (chokes on it a little, actually) and texts, _where is he? Tell him to call me._ Then he just sits, looking at the phone until his need to sleep completely overrides everything else and he drops off with his head tipped back against the headboard, phone silent as death in his hands.

\---

It’s another two weeks before anything else comes through; early February, though Dean couldn’t tell you the exact date. This time it’s a different number; Dean opens it with caution, never quite sure it won’t be something dangerous (or, worse, someone trying to sell him something) – and it’s just a single text, and it says, _Seattle._

Dean is in the kitchen at the time, music blaring loud from the radio; he doesn’t even realise the phone has made a noise until he looks at it, and by that time it’s twenty minutes since the message was sent. Is Cas there at all, let alone anymore?

_Cas?_

Nothing.

He tries to imagine Castiel in Seattle, and is unable; Dean’s actually never been there before really, aside from passing through, and all he saw on his brief brush with it was a large, featureless cluster of grey skyscrapers and hot traffic. He hadn’t even stayed long enough to experience its legendary rain; he wonders if it’s raining where Cas is, now. He hasn’t even got his coat.

They found the coat, like some threadbare heirloom, crumpled into a ball in one of the bedrooms, beneath a pillow. Dean, having an off day, almost asked Sam to burn it; but when he thought of how he’d carried it for so long, he couldn’t bear to.

He washed it, instead, and left it in the dryer, almost afraid to find another place for it. It could either mean too much, or too little; to hang it in his closet, or to stuff it in a drawer, felt either too intimate or not appreciative enough of what they’d been through. Leaving it in the dryer is a good between-space, a limbo between caring and being noncommittal.

He gets nothing from the phone for the rest of the day; it’s Sunday, and it passes peaceful. They make dinner; Dean lies mostly catatonic in front of the TV while Sam fucks around on the internet.

Three days later, he gets, _Happy belated valentine’s day._

He texts back, _fuck you,_ and throws the fucking phone across the room.

\---

The phone buzzes again in late April.

_Florida._

He’s in the library with Sam, looking up Naiads; the trouble with Greek myth is that no one ever assumes you’re going to have to kill anything from it. Dean looks at the text for a second, debating what to text back, when it buzzes again; all it says is, _Thirteen._

He thinks about what he knows of Florida; America’s dick; sunny and light-hearted. He texts back, _Hot?_

 _Excessively._ He gets in return, almost immediately, and laughs despite himself. He’s cooled down a little, since they last talked. It’s been a while, after all. Sam raises his head from the book he’s got his nose buried in.

 _Thirteen?_ Single words actually get a fucking answer out of him, which is unprecedented. He’s tried often enough to get Cas to call him, but no dice; he hasn’t quite worked up the courage to call, himself.

 _Siblings._ Is the response; Dean hopes that doesn’t mean he somehow _lost_ five of them between Seattle and Florida.

“Is it Cas again?” Sam asks him, and Dean nods. For a while he’d avoided telling Sam about the phone thing, for fear of what he might say; but he worked it out himself, eventually, purely based on the fact that every time Dean’s phone rang and it was Kevin or Garth or Charlie, he answered with uncharacteristic disappointment stark in his voice.

“Where is he?”

“Florida.”

Sam hums a laugh over his book. “Tell him to wear sunscreen.”

Dean chuckles in response, but doesn’t. Instead, he texts, _can you talk?_ and waits.

It’s a while before he replies; Dean gets into research again, he and Sam poring over an old Classics textbook which is either the biggest load of bullshit they’ve ever read, or complete genius and the resolution to most of their problems.

When Dean picks it up, it reads, _I don’t think that’s a good idea._ It’s the longest message Dean has had from him since he left.

_Why?_

He pictures Castiel; down there, in the sunshine, with thirteen brothers and sisters alongside him. He wonders what they’re doing; if it’s been worth it. If five of them have branched off, he can assume that something is either going terribly right or terribly wrong, but he doesn’t really dare ask.

In the motel that night, Naiad not vanquished but _reasoned with_ (who knew?), Sam says absently, “This must suck for you, huh? The long-distance thing.” He’s in the bathroom at the time, speaking in-between washing his face; Dean is sitting up against the headboard of his bed, watching TV without enthusiasm. “All of the stress and none of the phone sex.” He pauses. “I mean, I assume.” Another pause. “Can he work Skype?”

Dean manages not to splutter something indignant, and just says, “He doesn’t have a fucking laptop.”

 “So it’d be an option, if he did?” Sam says carefully; he comes out of the bathroom, towel in hands, and rubs it on his face as he talks. Dean frowns.

“Please tell me you’re not giving me advice on my sex life.”

“So you _have_ a sex life?” Dean looks at him irritably, and Sam raises his hands. “Hey! It’s not my fault you’re so fucking private. You think I _want_ to ask you this stuff?”

“Then why ask?”

Sam shrugs, rolling his eyes. “’Cause you’ve been biting everyone’s head off for the last few months? C’mon.” his voice gentles; Dean eyes him warily. “What’s the deal with you two?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. It’s true; Cas basically said _I have feelings for you,_ and kissed him, and other stuff, but they haven’t discussed it beyond that. Cas could be fucking someone else in Florida right this second, for all Dean knows (but somehow he doubts it) – and now that he thinks about it, he wonders why the hell they never opened up a dialogue. It might have helped.

“ _Really?”_  Dean shrugs. Sam goes to sit on his bed. “Did you fuck him?” he says, then, “Or, you know, vice/versa? No judgement.”

“ _Sam!”_ Dean looks at him in surprise and Sam, _so_ cavalier, looks back at him.

“What? I’m just asking!”

“Well _don’t._ Jesus christ.” He turns back to the TV.

“So, what, is that a yes or a no?”

Dean peels his gaze away from the TV again to stare at his brother in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you wearing a wire?”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, cause it matters _that_ much.” He frowns. “C’mon. You _obviously_ want to talk about it.”

“Not _that_ , you fucking perv.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Dean doesn’t know whether to be offended or not, considering he’s pretty much right. Sam sighs before saying, “So did _anything_ happen?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Sam looks extremely pleased with himself. “I fucking knew it! I _knew_ you guys had a weird tension, after purgatory. Charlie didn’t believe me.”

“Nothing happened in purgatory! You talked to Charlie about this?”

“Only a little. _She_ brought it up, after reading the books, you know. Wanted to know what your deal was, dude-wise.”

“What did you say?”

Sam shrugs easily. “I said I didn’t know. Are you _sure_ nothing happened in purgatory?”

“Yeah, Sam, I was there.”

Sam looks utterly floored by this, for reasons Dean can’t begin to understand (and nor does he want to, quite frankly). He doesn’t say anything else though, and Dean watches him twist his mouth around for a couple of seconds before turning back to the TV.

Dean is settling down to sleep, checking his phone one final time, when Sam speaks again. He’s got one of the books from the Men of Letters’ library, apparently trying to work his way through all of them (they’re pretty old books, so Dean isn’t all that interested; give him _Catch 22_ or Kerouac over that mess, any day). He speaks whilst not looking at Dean, nose in the book. “I feel sorry for you, man.” He says, and Dean sighs.

“Thanks.”

“Have you ever _discussed_ the phone sex thing? You should probably keep it in mind.”

Dean pulls the pillow over his head, turns over, and ignores him.

\---

From that point onwards, Castiel messages him a little more. He’ll tell him what the weather is like, or where they are; he’ll say, ‘ _beach’,_ and Dean will grin to imagine him there, always inappropriately dressed, squinting against the wind.

In mid-May Dean has just finished a hunt in Maine, hunting zombies like something straight out of a King novel (hey, Dean figures he has to get his material from _somewhere_ ), when Cas texts him, _‘It’s raining.’_

Dean, leaning against the wall of the motel while Sam checks them out, looks up at the dark sky above him. _Same here. Where are you?_

There is no response for a long time; Dean and Sam get their bags back into the car and are driving through Massachusetts when he finally replies, Sam with his head leant tiredly against the window (it takes it out of him so _easily,_ these days). When the phone goes off, sat in the space between them, it rasps loudly and Sam jumps awake. He glares at Dean, like it’s _his_ fault.

“Can’t you guys keep to a schedule or something?” he says grumpily. Dean ignores him and drives with one hand as he reads the text, Sam watching him the whole time in silent disapproval.

 _Maine._ The text reads, and Dean wonders how he knew they were there, until he realises.

He just _panics_ – he all but throws the phone at Sam and keeps driving, foot hovering around the brake pedal, wondering if he should turn back. “Text him back. Say, _are you still there?”_

“What? Why?”

“He’s in Maine.”

“Oh.” Sam’s thumbs fly on the phone, but the minutes after he’s sent the text message stretch out too, too long. Dean pulls over onto the shoulder as soon as he can and they sit in the car, waiting; rain thrums against the roof of the car like pebbles on tin.

It’s strange being there, waiting with bated breath, the outside world so _loud;_ the car like a bubble of hesitant calm, the phone at its centre. The text comes through a couple of seconds later, _Leaving soon._

Sam reads him the text; Dean snatches the phone out of his hands and opens the car door to the howling rain. He’s soaked almost seconds after getting outside, and he shrugs his arms out of his jacket and pulls it over his head to offer him at least _some_ protection. With rain blurring the screen, six months after Cas left, he finally hits ‘call’.

The sound of the phone ringing is fucking excruciating. The sound of his voice on the other end of the phone is worse.

“Dean?”

“Cas.” He breathes a sigh of relief into the phone, and it’s cut off by Cas talking again.

“Are you driving? I can barely hear you.”

“S’raining.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause; Dean doesn’t know what to say. “I haven’t got very long.” Castiel tells him, and Dean half-thinks, _typical,_ and half-thinks, _thank god._ He doesn’t know what he’ll say, given enough time. Something cruel; something pathetic. He tugs his jacket tighter across his chest, phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.

“We were in Maine.” He says quickly, all in one breath, and Castiel doesn’t speak for a while, after that.

“Are you close by?”

“Four hours away.”

“We’ll be gone, by then.”

“I figured.” He doesn’t ask, do you miss me, do you think about me, are you okay. There are ten angels left, now; Cas told him so, a couple of days before. “Have you thought about phone sex?” he says, mostly to break the silence, and is rewarded with a gentle huff of laughter on the other end of the phone.

“I can honestly say I haven’t.”

Dean leans against the car. He feels like shit; he’s fucking soaked, he’s exhausted from the hunt. He missed Cas by four fucking hours. But his voice, just that, on the other end of the phone, makes him feel not _quite_ so lost. “Sam thinks it’d be a good idea.”

“And you thought so too?”

“I don’t know.” Dean’s laughing at the very idea. He’s not going to fucking – _sext –_ an angel, fallen or not, let alone fucking phone him and dirty-talk while they both jerk off. They both know it, too. “What’d you think?”

“I’m so _tired._ ” He says, apropos of nothing. Dean sighs.

“Me too.” He’s near-shouting over the rain; his skin already feels weird and dirty, tacky and half-dry, even underneath the jacket. His shirt and jeans are plastered to him. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“How are you and Sam?”

“Same as always.” Which isn’t really an answer, but Cas lets it go. “Think about the phone sex thing.”

Castiel laughs, again. “I will. I have to go, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Give Sam’s love to the kids.”

Castiel snorts softly again, and then the phone goes dead.

He clambers back into the car, seat of his pants so wet it slides against the leather, everything dripping. He drops the phone on the dash and peels off his jacket; turns on the heater in the car. “It’s fucking wet out there.”

Sam looks at him as if to say, _no shit,_ but he says, “What did he say?”, instead.

“Wouldn’t reach him in time. He’s moving on.”

“You good?”

Dean nods, and starts the car, wiping his wet face on his sleeve. “Sure. As I’ll ever be.”

\---

Summertime is actually surprisingly quiet for them. Usually, the heat seems to bring the monsters out, but Dean and Sam find themselves almost at a complete loss for things to do. When Charlie calls and asks if they’re up for the Mid-Year Jubilee, they jump at the chance.

Dean flirts briefly with the idea of inviting Cas to join them, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to ask him to come back. He and Sam had a Long Talk about letting Cas make his own choices, have his freedom, and Dean has resolved to be careful about violating it. He holds back.

The morning before it, Cas texts him, _Texas,_ and, _seven._

Seven is a lot fewer than last time. Dean wonders where they’ve all gone to; Sam got a call a few days ago from his friend, the dark haired one, and she told him she was at _college,_ for god’s sake. How Cas managed that, he’d never know; they’ve got money enough (Charlie made sure of that), but Dean doesn’t know how someone who, up until recently, didn’t even have _skin_ could enrol at a college for real.

Still, according to Sam, she’s getting her law degree. Good for her.

He makes fun of Sam on the drive up, asking him if he’s got a thing for the fallen angel – not that he’s got a leg to stand on, there – but Sam pulls a face.

“She’s like a little sister, man. She’s sweet.”

“Looks old enough to be your mom.”

“Yeah, well, Cas is older than this _planet,_ so shut the fuck up.”

Cas is surprisingly talkative the whole day; Dean’s used to getting general stuff from him; the weather, maybe something that’s happened to him; but every break they get Dean ends up on his phone, sending messages back and forth with Cas. Charlie raises her eyebrows ( _“Are you telling him stuff about me? Tell him stuff about me.” “Get lost, Charlie. He already knows about you.” “It better all be positive, squire.” “Yes, your highness.” “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”)_ but neither she nor Sam really say anything about it, beyond a couple of meaningful glances.

They hang out for a while after with Charlie and some of the others, half-in their LARPing gear. The field they’ve rented for the event is theirs until at _least_ seven the next morning, so, like Charlie says, they might as well get wasted in it.

They sit on fold-up chairs outside the tents, a table covered in booze inside one of them, and it’s vaguely surreal, LARPers wandering around tipsily, all of them calling hello to Charlie and the boys. The field is empty now, spread out in the darkness like a deep green sea, and the warm yellow light from the tent only reaches so far.

“So,” Charlie drinks Malibu and coke, and Dean can make fun of her now that’s she’s not technically the queen anymore – but as he gets a little drunker he has one for himself, too, and he must admit, it’s kind of nice. “You guys are going through a dry spell, huh?”

For a minute Dean thinks yet _another_ person is questioning him about his sex life, until he realises she means hunting. “Yeah.” He shrugs. “Maybe it’s good for us though, you know? Sammy needs to rest.”

Sam is pretty much drunk by this point, grinning in his chair, looking entirely pleased by the whole world, occasionally hiccupping. Charlie grins at him. “This whole thing really took it out of you guys, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Cas? He’s not an angel anymore?”

Dean shakes his head. “I think he has nightmares.” He didn’t mean to talk about it, wary of Cas’ privacy, but he’s not here now, and Dean is tipsy, and he guesses he’ll never know. “He gets up in the night, like every night, and he throws up. I think.” He remembers it so vividly, every time. Castiel in the darkness, his face wet. Dean used to do that, too; splash himself with water to try and wash off the scent of blood, the smell of sulphur. He dreads to think what Cas was trying to sluice away.

Charlie sucks down more of her drink and frowns. “Can a dream make you throw up?”

“If it’s bad enough.”

“Geez.”

“Yeah.”

She looks at him, and then laughs. “Speak of the devil.”

Dean stares at her for a moment; she nods at the leg of his chair. His phone has slid out of his pocket and dropped into the grass, and it’s ringing. “It’s probably not Cas.” He mumbles, and realises he’s slurring, just a little. “He never calls me.” But the screen of his phone speaks of the contrary, and Dean grins and apologises as he answers it, staggering away.

“Hey.” He says once he’s out of earshot. He sits alone beside one of the tents; plays with the grass with one hand, in the darkness.

Castiel sighs, on the other end. “Are you busy?”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” He sounds exhausted. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, we’re fine. We’re drinking. I’m a little drunk.”

Castiel laughs and it makes him smile. “Okay.”

“Are you okay?”

Castiel sighs again, and is quiet for a while. “At the risk of embarrassing you, can I tell you something?”

Dean doubts his preparedness, but nods – and then realises Cas can’t see him, and says, “Yeah. Shoot.”

“I miss you all the time.”

Dean laughs. Castiel is silent on the other end. “Sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you, I just.” He pauses. The summer air is thick and warm; the lights on the tents are all crowded with tiny black insects, throwing themselves at the plastic, over and over. “Really?”

Castiel sounds so embarrassed on the other end that Dean is almost proud of himself. “Dean, don’t mock me, please.”

“I wasn’t! I wasn’t. I just.” He pauses. “You’re not really a ‘miss you’ kind of guy.”

“Neither are you.”

“I guess so.” He waits, and all he can hear is Cas on the other end of the phone, breathing. “I wish you’d been here today.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t have been very good at it.”

“You’d pick it up.” He smiles to himself. “Charlie wants to meet you really badly.”

“I’m sure she will, soon enough.”

Dean doesn’t ask when, because he knows he won’t get an answer. He wonders if there’s any point in asking him if he’ll ever come back. Instead, he says, “If I’d known you were gonna be gone so long, I’d have made sure we were like, _constantly_ fucking.”

Castiel barks a laugh at that. “Dean, you’re drunk.”

“I’m not that bad. I mean it.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah, it is. Would’ve been.”

“I’m sure.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Only slightly.”

Dean picks at a hole in his jeans, at the knee. They let it go quiet. Cas is actually one of the few people where Dean doesn’t feel like he _has_ to talk; not all the time. Right now, it’s just nice to know he’s there. It’s been such a long time.

He thinks he’s going to say something stupid, then; overwhelmed by the summer air, by the booze, the sound of Cas’ breathing down the line. Cas just about stops him by speaking.

“It’s hard sometimes.” He breathes, and Dean can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Are you going for the phone sex thing, Cas? ‘Cause I’m in public, but I’m game.”

“Dean.”

“Sorry.” He threads his fingers through the grass beside him. “How many are left?”

“Six. I’m happy for them.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But it’s h – _difficult,_ as well.”

“Nice catch.”

“Thankyou.”

Dean turns, phone still pressed to his ear, because someone is calling his name. He doesn’t want to leave; he’s warm, here, and Cas seems _off_ somehow; uncharacteristically vulnerable; but he hasn’t seen Charlie in a while, and he doesn’t know if it’s cool of him to leave for so long to talk to his whatever-Cas-is. He doesn’t want to be _that_ guy. “I think I gotta go.”

“Okay.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Watching television.”

“Watch _Justified._ It’ll remind you of me.”

Castiel laughs. “Dean. Go.”

“Okay.” He mumbles. Castiel breathes in, like he’s going to say something else, and Dean waits; but instead the silence continues. “Bye, Cas.”

“Bye, Dean.”

He hangs up, and looks at the phone for a couple of seconds, before he hears his name again. He gets up, sliding the phone into the pocket of his jeans, and staggers over to Charlie.

“I can’t find some of the guys.” She says, not sounding all that worried, considering. Dean looks at her.

“So, what, is it a ghost? Werewolf or something?”

“No? Dean, they’re just drunk. Come help me find them. Sam’s useless.”

Dean grins and goes over to help his little brother to his feet; he pulls his long body out of his chair by the hand, and drags him along with them, into the woods. “C’mon, big guy. Walk it off.”

Sam mumbles something dopey in response.

\---

“Cas. Cas, talk to me.” All he can hear on the other end is Cas’ cut-off breaths, rasping. He balances the phone between his shoulder and his ear; down the other line he can _just_ hear the sound of Cas’ hand moving up and down his dick. He hasn’t got much time (he _never_ has much time) but that’s not really going to be a problem, considering this is the first time Dean’s actually been alone in _weeks._

Dean, naked from the waist down, pulls his legs up to his chest and takes his balls in one hand as he strokes himself with the other, trying to keep quiet. Cas isn’t even talking; Dean doesn’t know if he _can._ But Dean isn’t much better, hand moving faster and faster between his legs, slick with lube. He lets go of his balls and reaches lower with his other hand until he finds his hole, and can trace the rim with a fingertip. Just that, it’s like fucking electricity. Cas isn’t even _here,_ and it’s like electricity; so much better than his imagination. So much better than on his own. He grunts, and gasps down the line, “You with me, Cas?”

Castiel makes a noise that’s half-laugh, half-sob. “Yes.” He breathes in. “Actually, I don’t know. I can’t see you.” Dean cracks, finally – this is ridiculous, and it’s stupid, but it’s _hot_ as well, getting to hear Cas’ moans right against the shell of his ear – he laughs, loud, and cuts it off with his own breath snagging in his throat.

“You’re with me.” He says, assured, and Castiel’s breaths shudder down the line.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m – I’ve got my fingers inside. Inside me.” he says, truthfully now as he starts to work one in, desperate for some kind of pressure. “Wish they were yours. Wish it was _you.”_

Castiel laughs shakily in return. “Me too.” He’s gasping; so is Dean. “Dean, I’m – I’m close, I’m going to-“

“It’s fine, go, I’m close too, it’s fine.”

Castiel sounds muffled; Dean wonders if he’s turned his face against his pillow to stifle the noise he makes when he comes; for a moment all he can hear is his own breathing, is Castiel’s breathing, is the sound of their hands working, indecipherable from one another. Then Castiel says his name again, brokenly, and he sighs, loud, and long.

“You still with me?” Dean says, still moving his hand; still fucking his finger slowly in and out of himself, knees drawn up. He adds another, picks up the pace.

“Mm.”

Dean laughs. “Don’t fall asleep.” His words are garbled.

“I won’t.”

“Talk to me.” He mumbles, just on the edge, balls heavy in his hands when he moves his hand down the length of his dick and rolls them in his palm. “Tell me what you’d do if you were here.”

Castiel’s breath actually catches, even though he literally _just_ came. Dean has to admire his tenacity. “Everything. Anything.” He sighs on the other end. Dean imagines him; covered in come, lazily stroking his softening cock; splayed on the bed.

“Be specific, Cas, that’d help. Don’t get lazy.”

Castiel laughs. “Fine. I’d take you in my mouth.” His voice comes thick; Dean makes a harsh sound in the back of his throat. “I’ve wanted to for so long, Dean,” he mumbles like he’s said too much, and Dean squeezes his eyes shut.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

That’s it. He doesn’t know if it’s the idea of Cas thinking about it before, or if it’s his fingers finding his prostate, or the movement of his hand on his cock, but he tips over the edge, legs trembling, and paints his stomach white. Stomach shaking, he pulls his fingers free of himself, carefully, and covers his eyes with his forearm.

“Jesus.”

“Did you-“

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Christ.” For a moment, he just breathes. “You still there?”

“Yes.”

“One of Sam’s better ideas.”

He can almost _hear_ Cas roll his eyes. “Please don’t talk about your brother right now.”

Exhausted, Dean starts laughing again.

\---

All through autumn they live separate lives.

Cas, dealing with something he doesn’t like to talk about (something, Dean assumes, to do with his five remaining brothers and sisters), Dean and Sam hunting again. As soon as it comes up to Halloween it’s like the monsters get a fucking fever; everyone comes out of the woodwork, witches and succubi and ghouls and vamps and even, at one point, a mermaid, whose sharp teeth and general lack of hygiene disproved a lot of ‘interpretations’ Dean had seen.

He calls, on occasion; but not as often as Dean would like, and Dean is reluctant to phone of his own volition, wary of bothering him. They see Kevin and Garth pretty often; Charlie comes to visit on her way to conventions, every now and then.

Largely it passes without remark. Dean and Cas hold strange, stilted conversations sometimes, and fluid, easy ones others. It depends what kind of day it’s been; it depends what the weather’s been like.

Even though Dean and Sam are hunting all over the country throughout September, October and November, they keep missing each other by a hair’s breadth. By November it’s been a whole year since Dean has seen him, and he thinks maybe it’s finally, finally starting to drive him mad.

\---

On December 23rd Castiel calls him, after a three-week lull in communication. Dean picks it up, dizzy with eggnog, and swings the phone to his ear.

“Cas!”

“Dean.” He can hear him smiling on the other end.

“Merry Christmas! Or, you know, happy holidays, or whatever.”

“You too.” He’s being quiet, but not unhappy-quiet. Dean fights the blur of alcohol back.

“What’s up?”

Castiel just says, “One.”

Dean swallows. He falters. Sam and Charlie and Kevin are all around watching dumb Christmas movies, but when Dean stops in his tracks, no longer smiling, Sam looks at him and lifts a brow. He waves his brother off, and wanders a little ways from his brother and his friends, phone pressed to his ear. “What?”

“One left.” Castiel says quietly, and Dean swallows.

“What does, uh. What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

Dean stands there, aware that all three of them are staring at him, and murmuring amongst themselves. “Um.” He swallows. “How long until they’re all gone?”

“About a week.”

“You’ll miss Christmas.”

“What?”

“Come home.” He blurts, helplessly; hopelessly. He looks away from Sam, who is grinning at him. His heart seizes in his chest.

“To you?” Castiel’s voice on the other end is so _wary._

“Yes, you fucking idiot, come home to _us.”_ He stops, suddenly terrified. “I mean. If you want to.”

“If you want me to.” He hears Castiel swallow; his voice, on the other end, is thick with joy. Dean can damn near _feel_ it; it’s not the fucking eggnog. “I could make it by New Year’s.”

“Fuck.” It suddenly seems so _soon._ “Fuck. Okay. Yeah. New year’s.”

“Maybe new year’s eve.”

“I don’t fucking care.” He looks at Sam and ducks his head because he knows he looks like a fucking idiot, the way he’s smiling. “Come home, Cas.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Cool.” His words tremble.

“I have to go.”

“Okay.” He sucks in a breath. “See you soon.”

“See you soon.”

He hangs up the phone and plays it cool; his hands are shaking. He goes to rejoin his brother on the sofa, watching _Home Alone._

“Good news?” Charlie asks from the floor. Kevin is teaching her to play _Risk;_ the longer Dean watches, the more he wants to join them.

“You know. Whatever.”

“When’s he coming?”

“Around new year’s.”

“You can dance if you want to, Dean.” She smiles at him. “You can leave your friends behind.”

“I’m fine.” He snorts at her. His heart pounds in his chest. He nods at the TV. “What’d I miss?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> penultimate chapter omg !!! ♥
> 
> on tumblr, this is [part 9 ♥](http://pastrymisha.tumblr.com/post/56552989114/halfway-part-9)

“He’s gonna be here.” Sam stands at his side outside the train station, looking just as itchy in his boots as Dean feels.

Cas is late by a couple of hours.

Dean had woken up so early that morning he felt like a fucking idiot; unable to sleep, too nervous to sit still, he’d paced around in the living room half-watching old episodes of _Dallas_ until Sam had blearily come to find him and told him in no uncertain terms to go the _fuck_ to bed.

They lean outside the station. A line of railings runs, long, down the platform. In-between Dean and Sam and whatever train Cas gets off of, there is a ticket booth; a small magazine kiosk. Nothing Dean wants to see.

He wishes he were on the platform; wishes he could wait for the train like you were supposed to, edging your head up to peer at the passing black windows of the trains, hoping for a familiar face.

It’s been a whole fucking year since Dean has seen him, and a full two days since they’ve spoken. Dean took his word for it; it’s December 31st. It was the nine a.m. train, but now that has been and gone.

He shuffles uncomfortably, the cold railing cutting into his back. A few days ago the snow started coming down in droves, and it hasn’t stopped since; they’ve been out here about an hour, sure (Dean refused to get back into the car), but it still seems ridiculous that Sam’s wide shoulders are coated with snow. He keeps brushing it off, but the flakes fall fat from the sky, and the effort is basically futile.

“Is he?” he murmurs, old doubt creeping in. Caught up in it – the fact that Cas was coming back at _all –_ had somehow dulled his general apprehension about Cas. Waiting at the station, it comes back, full-force. He digs his gloved hand in his pocket and clumsily pulls out his phone; unlocks it with his nose, unable to use the touch-screen with his hands covered.

It’s 11 a.m. now. No text.

“Dean. Come on. He _wants_ to come back. You said so yourself, he sounded excited when he called.”

“Yeah.” He replies dully, and looks over his shoulder at the platform, gritted so no snow will stick. He can barely see the tracks from where he is; too low down, for one, but also the backdrop of the station is nothing but endless fields, now white; white on white on white, and he’s going to go get in the fucking car and drive away if he’s here much longer without word. “Fuck.” He mutters quietly, and wonders if he’ll ever get tired of this; waiting around, only ever to be disappointed.

He checks his phone again, just for the sake of it, and his heart gives a little twinge in his chest when he sees the icon for ‘new message’, glowing bright in the middle of the screen.

He fumbles; puts his phone back in his pocket, pulls his glove off with his teeth, grabs it from his pocket again. The text reads; _Cow on the line,_ and he laughs so brokenly that Sam’s expression turns worried.

“What?”

“His train was delayed.”

“See? What did I tell you?”

_How long?_

_20 minutes. Weather permitting._

He doesn’t text back; that’s enough. He slips the phone back into his pocket. “He’ll be here soon.”

Half an hour later, Cas is standing in front of them outside the train station; nose smudged red with cold, eyes bright. There’s a dusting of snow, half-melted, in his hair, just from the walk from the train to where Sam and Dean are waiting.

He’s in jeans and, of all things, a sweatshirt that reads _Michigan State_ across the front. He looks around for them when he comes out of the station, squinting through the snow, and when his eyes land on them, he falters. So does Dean.

He walks over to them, and stands with the snow pouring down; one hand in his jeans pocket, the other clutching a black sports bag.

“Hey, Cas.” Sam speaks first; Dean doesn’t know what would’ve come out, if he did. He lifts a hand, because it’s easier. Sam looks between them, awkwardly, then shrugs. “Car’s over there.” He says, jerking a thumb at it, and Castiel smiles softly, eyes alighting on Dean and then dragging away.

“Thankyou for coming to meet me.”

The ride back is so strange. With the car heater blaring, Castiel sits in the back seat as Dean drives, and Sam leans back over the seat to ask him questions, which Castiel answers in a level and careful tone. The sweatshirt is from his sister. He’s been – from what Dean can tell – pretty much _everywhere._  The only time Castiel pauses in answering Sam’s questions is when Dean changes the radio station and some old crooning lilt by Buddy Holly comes on. He sits still for a second, a tiny smile playing about his lips.

It doesn’t take them long to drive back to the bunker, and Dean has still barely said a word. He shuts off the car and shrugs amiably when Castiel refuses to be helped with his bags. They descend the steps into the bunker together, Sam carrying most of the conversation. Something twists and roils in Dean’s stomach every time Castiel’s eyes land on him.

It feels like a dream, having him here; home. The bunker is warm; some kind of heating system they haven’t yet figured out the workings of keeps it from freezing over, even though ninety per cent of it is stone and glasswork, and when Castiel gets into the living room, dropping his bag on the floor, Dean thinks he should start a fire, get the boiler heated up, make sure there’s warmth enough. He’d made barely any preparations before going to the station, wary of tempting fate, but now Cas is present; shabby jeans, sensible shoes and all. He feels distinctly unready. 

Sam murmurs something about wishing they could order Chinese, then shrugs. “We were gonna make burgers.” He says, and Castiel smiles so gratefully that Dean’s lungs seize for the briefest of seconds.

“I’d like that.”

“Thought so.” Sam grins, then gestures at Dean. “You gonna show him, or what?”

“What?”

Sam gestures to the outer hallway, and Dean finally realises what he’s getting at. “Shit. Right.” He goes over and picks up Cas’ bag without question, ignoring Castiel’s soft huff of irritation. He stands in the doorway with it shouldered, and nods into the hall. “C’mon.”

Castiel follows him with curiosity, hands in his pockets, all the way; until Dean stops in front of one of the many doorways, and looks down at his shoes. He lifts his hand, and pushes the door open. Goes in first, and waits for Castiel to follow after.

It’s a small, neat space. The bed’s freshly made; there’s a desk with a small pile of books sitting on it, and a chair. Dean sets the bag down in the middle of the floor, as if at a loss as to where else to put it.

“This is mine.” Castiel says from the doorway, not a question. Dean falls silent as Castiel steps fully into the room, drawing a hand from his pocket to run it along the edge of the desk and chair; to skim his fingertips against the outline of the bed.

“It’s too much, right?” Dean asks him, warily; Castiel turns to look at him. “It’s not – we’re not trying to pressure you, or anything.”

“It’s not too much.” He says quietly, voice faraway. He eyes the desk. “Are the books yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Thankyou.”

“S’just a loan.” He says, awkwardly, and Castiel smiles.

“Thankyou, nonetheless.”

“No problem.”

He doesn’t mention it; the coat, neatly folded; laid on the bed. Dean doesn’t know if he’ll construe it as a compliment or an insult; if he’ll take it to mean _I miss you as you were._ Dean doesn’t even really know what it was _supposed_ to mean, anyway; it just felt right to put it there.

Castiel looks at him for a long moment before Dean starts moving out of the room. “I’ll leave you to, you know; get settled, or whatever.”

“Thankyou.” The smile never leaves his face, and neither does his gaze drop from Dean’s. Who knows what the fuck he’s being so shy about; god knows Cas has gasped things down the phone to him that go _way_ beyond the boundaries of ‘personal’, this year; but part of him is a little worried that if he gets too close, speaks too loud, the image of Castiel will dissipate like smoke.

\---

Dinner is relatively quiet, but it’s nice, all the same. Dean helps Sam cook, Castiel hangs around, trying to assist in any way he can, and the three of them reject the too-long dining table in favour of the couch, and TV. Sam curls his long legs beneath him and Castiel sits prim between he and Dean, still too careful in his movements to ever truly splay.

They laugh, when Castiel tells them he got really into _Mad Men,_ and tell him about what they’ve been doing; about the mid-year jubilee and how Charlie has promised to ‘hunt him down’ if she doesn’t meet him before next year’s. About hunting and the ridiculous things that happen to them as part of the status quo.

Castiel, in turn, details the fates of his brothers and sisters; some settled in little apartments; got jobs as waitstaff; as secretaries; as busboys. Others wanted to go to college, and with a fair bit of cajoling, Castiel managed to get them in. They wrote essays; they bribed admissions departments. Eventually, everyone was packed off. Settled. So of course, eventually, there remained only one.

Neither Dean nor Sam asks him why he came back, or why he decided to. Dean still doesn’t quite know.

The evening winds down with ease, lax and gentle, and by eleven Sam is in bed, and even Cas is yawning and tipping his head back against the couch cushions, their three empty plates clustered together on the floor.

“I’m gonna go to bed.” Dean tells him after twenty minutes of silently watching E.R. Castiel lifts his head to look at him.

“I probably should, too.”

“Probably. You look beat.”

“I am.” He closes his eyes, briefly; Dean gets up from the couch and hears the TV turn off, and Castiel slide from his seat, moments later.

Dean’s bedroom is the first along the hallway, and it is there that they separate. Castiel shoots him an affectionate smile. He lingers at Dean’s door; looks as if he’s going to reach out, but doesn’t; and then he pads away, leaving Dean to watch his retreating back and kick himself (metaphorically) for not saying or doing a little more.

With a final glance at the hallway Dean goes into his room; strips off his shirt and jeans, pulls on an old t-shirt.

He sits on his bed with his hands on his knees for a while, looking at his bare feet, heart pounding in his chest.

He mutters, out loud, “I’m such a fucking idiot.” And gets up from the bed; crosses the room; trips into the hallway.

He winces at how loud his feet sound, bare, on the floor. His bedroom door clicks shut behind him and he walks slowly in the direction of Cas’ room, thinking all the while that he’ll be asleep, that he’ll be tired, that maybe he’s reconsidered this whole thing, maybe it was different, maybe they just worked _better_ when Cas was away. The cacophony in his head is so loud that he doesn’t even notice Castiel until he collides with him.

They look at each other, stricken, for a couple of minutes before Castiel covers his own face with a hand. “We’re ridiculous.” He says tiredly, and Dean starts laughing. He can’t stop himself; he pulls Castiel to him with a fierceness he didn’t even know he _felt,_ and chokes desperately on his own mirth when Castiel’s arms encircle him in return; press them so close together that he can feel his goddamned heart beat in the middle of the hallway. Their bare feet echo, shifting, on the floors.

“God.” It comes out muffled, against Castiel’s shoulder. “ _God.”_ He says, again, and Castiel laughs again, and it comes out thickly.

“I didn’t know if –“

Dean can’t hear him properly. He pulls back. “Didn’t know if what?”

“I didn’t know if you wanted –“

“Are you fucking _kidding me?”_

“No.” Castiel answers irritably, and the prissiness of his tone all but forces Dean to grab his face and crush their mouths together.

The push-pull of it hurts; it doesn’t feel real to be standing there with him after so long; having him so _close_ he can fucking _smell_ him.

There’s so much he wants to say but it doesn’t come out any easier here than it does down the phone, than it does writing it out; there’s part of Dean, a part that perhaps has always been there, that just wants to sleep in Castiel’s arms. Saying nothing; forgetting all the rest.

But this is good too, better than good, Castiel kissing him sloppily, huffing breath, long nose crushed against his cheek. They sound like they’re starved; maybe they are, it being so long, that distance so fucking tangible every word down the phone line hurt like a razor-sharp thread dragged out of his skin.

He stumbles back, or Cas stumbles forward; either way Dean ends up with his back against the wall, with Castiel in his arms, pushing, pushing, pushing. He breaks away to mutter “Y’wanna sleep in your new room tonight?” and Castiel makes a wild noise in the back of his throat.

“Shut up, Dean. Shut up.”

Dean’s knees buckle from the laughter building in the base of him; he fists his hands in the front of Castiel’s shirt and pitches him forward when he tugs, buries his face against Castiel’s shoulder, grins to himself and kisses his neck and grins some more. He lifts his head and joins their mouths again, smiling almost too hard to kiss him properly, laughter bubbling in his throat. It’s unbelievable, how solid he is; the hot press of Castiel’s hands, fumbling with every inch of Dean he can reach. Dean pulls back, just a little, and leans his forehead against Castiel’s. It’s like the effort to hold each other up is too much; they’re slumped against the wall, tips of their noses just barely touching, eyes locked. Dean can’t really see him, but he can feel Cas lift his hand and thumb at the collar of his shirt.

“I’m so glad.” Castiel says softly, but doesn’t elaborate. Dean thinks maybe he gets it, anyway.

He leans forward to kiss him again, just a bare cling of lips, and moves his hands into Castiel’s hair.

“You got a haircut.” He mumbles, and Castiel laughs.

“Can you tell?”

“S’longer.”

“It’s probably grown.”

“Yeah.” There’s a long, hopeless second where Dean thinks, just a little, that Cas is going to pull away from him.

Instead, he says, “Dean.” And finds Dean’s hand, on the back of his head. He threads their fingers together. “Come on.”

They end up in Cas’ room, if only because it’s closer. Cas shuts the door behind him and looks at Dean, hovering close, for a long moment. “Will Sam hear?”

“Uh.” Dean tries his best not to grin. “Depends what you’re gonna do to me.”

“ _Dean.”_

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, he’s been bugging me about you for fucking _months,_ he can deal with it.”

“Dean.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m kidding! His room is too far away, you know that. This place is fucking huge.”

“Okay.” Then, softer, “Okay.” He pulls Dean close to him again, wrapping his hands around the base of his neck, and his breath hitches when Dean presses them line-to-line against the door, making Dean suddenly, painfully aware of the fact that he’s only in his boxers, and no one other than himself has touched his cock for a fucking _year._ Cas looks down at him; makes Dean squirm a little under his scrutiny; then takes him by the shoulders and turns him so he’s pressed against the door. Castiel slides to his knees.

They’ve talked about this, and more, on the phone. Dean wonders if the government really _does_ record everyone’s conversations; if it does, they know a hell of a lot about Castiel’s mouth, and where he wants to put it. Castiel noses at his dick through his boxers, breathing in, and it’s almost too much when he mouths damply at the base, saliva sticking Dean’s underwear to his skin. He shakes; Castiel’s hands hold him still against the door, thumbs against his hipbones. He thinks he hears – thinks he _feels_ – Castiel mumble his name before he slides his boxers down his legs, over his knees, leaving them to pool at Dean’s feet, as Castiel wraps his mouth around Dean’s cock.

He bites his lip; presses his head back against the door, back arching, and tries not to shoot off like a fucking idiot before this thing has even really _begun._ He wants to make it last, has been thinking about it for fucking long enough. He closes his eyes and tries to count prime numbers; Castiel’s mouth is wet, and warm.

He’s dimly aware of the sound of both of them; Castiel making soft, luxuriant noises around his cock; Dean, grunting between his teeth. When the head of his cock slurs against the inside of Cas’ cheek, his knees weaken; he thinks for a moment that the only thing truly holding him up are Castiel’s hands, firm on his hips, keeping him held to the door.

“Cas. Shit.” He mumbles, and Castiel looks up at him from where he is, moving his mouth slowly up and down, which only makes things worse. “This – shit.” He reaches for him, carefully; brushes the hair back from his forehead. It _is_ longer. “I don’t –“ his breath hitches. “I don’t want to, yet.”

Castiel pulls off, gently. He leans his head against Dean’s thigh; the cold air on Dean’s dick makes him shiver. “Bed?”

“Mm.”

Dean stills, against the door, and starts laughing. “Fuck, do you have – anything?”

Castiel looks up at him. “Anything what?”

“Lube. A rubber. I don’t fucking know, anything?”

Castiel frowns. “No.” at Dean’s exasperated sigh, he looks affronted. “I didn’t want to presume.”

“Yeah, well, I chose a room for you fucking miles away from mine because _I_ didn’t want to presume, so now I’m gonna have to fucking –“ he starts laughing, “Jesus. Okay. Hold on.”

He fumbles with his boxers; _doesn’t_ enjoy, at all, the slur of cotton over the already sensitive head of his dick. He crouches down to kiss Castiel, who is now sitting on the floor, and murmurs, “This'll take one second.”

“It had better.” Castiel sounds so moody about it that he barks a laugh, then stands straight again and opens the door just enough that he can slip out.

He runs down the hallway like an idiot, actually _smiling_ because it’s so fucking stupid but he’d still never want to be doing anything else, and makes a mess of his whole room fumbling in the bedside table for lube and condoms, thanking whatever deity was listening that he fell into the habit of keeping them stocked and close-by a long time ago.

When he gets back to Castiel’s room, taking care to shut the door behind him as quietly as possible, Cas practically fucking _leaps_ on him, laying a solid kiss on his mouth, pulling him back, onto the bed, to sit on Cas’ waist. He can feel the hard push of Cas’ cock beneath him, through his pyjama pants, and the thought – the _reality_ beyond talking to Cas on the phone and imagining fingers could ever possibly feel like him – is staggering. It winds him.

Cas apparently has no time for feeling overwhelmed, though, because he strips himself out of his own shirt in an eyeblink, and tugs Dean’s own off his shoulders before Dean can even think about doing it himself. He shifts so he can pull his own pyjama pants off (dean wonders idly where he got them, if he picked them out himself; they’re grey, and soft), and Dean follows suit with his boxers. Sitting on top of Castiel, both of them completely naked, he finds himself at a bit of a loss.

“Huh.” He says quietly, and Cas looks at him, raised up on his elbows. “I’m –“ he feels like he should say something, for some stupid reason. Castiel seems to think it’s stupid, too, judging by his expression.

“Do you want –?” he doesn’t know how to phrase it. They’ve talked about this, if only in the heat of the moment, in fantasy, and it can (it _has,_ if only verbally), go both ways. But Dean thinks about how long it’s been, how much he wants to be _close_ to him, and that’s what decides it.

“Fuck me.” He murmurs, bending to lay a kiss on his brow. “That’s what I want.”

Castiel follows after him when Dean moves away; catches his mouth with his own; mutters his name. Dean swings off him and moves up to the headboard; says, “Cas.” Gently, a request; and Castiel follows. He rolls the condom on, and kneels between Dean’s legs; his eyes are almost _too_ careful, _too_ tender. Dean doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. He thinks of all the things he hasn’t said yet, that he might accidentally let slip.

Cas keeps eye contact with him, even as he slicks his fingers with lube; even as he circles his rim with a fingertip before breaching him, Dean’s knees drawn as close to his chest as he can manage. Humanity has not robbed Castiel of his soft, curious gaze, and it is trained on Dean even now, his cock swollen and aching, so hard that it is flushed, drooling wet against his navel. Castiel only looks away from his eyes when Dean mutters, “Cas, just – please –“ and then it is to watch his two fingers, soon three, pulling in and out of Dean’s body, the sound of it wet and obscene. He’s wordless; his lips hang, parted. Dean tells him faster, tells him “Little deeper, it’s fine, it’s okay.” And Castiel complies without argument, bending to mouth at Dean’s hip, at the base of his cock, as he twists his fingers; thrusts them deeper, stringing Dean out so thin that eventually his breath comes in tiny, shallow gasps; he lifts a hand to clutch at the headboard above him, and uses the other to thread his fingers through Cas’ hair. “Now. Now is good. Cas.”

Castiel nods, and withdraws his fingers, so slow that is aches; he crawls up Dean’s body, cock pressing bluntly between his legs, and takes his face in both his hands, smearing wet against his brow. “Now?”

Dean laughs desperately. “Don’t be a fucking tease right now, okay?”

“Okay.” He’s smiling, but it’s not even in his pleased-with-himself way; it’s careful. It gives the moment gravity, even if the moment is just Castiel reaching between them, down, to guide himself inside.

Dean shuts his eyes, just briefly, but is forced to crack them open again when Cas pushes in, gently; draws out again, pushes in, a soft, spiralling roll of his hips that draws from Dean noises he doesn’t actually think he’s ever made before; he clutches at Cas’ arm with one hand; grips the headboard tighter with the other; loses a little of his sanity in the way Castiel _gasps,_ bottoms out, his hips flush against Dean’s. He bends forward, he’s _shaking,_ and he leans his forehead against Dean’s.

“Are you okay?”

“Are _you?”_

“Yes.”

“Me, too.”

Castiel breathes out, a halting stutter, and nudges Dean’s nose with his own. “Can I-“

“Do it.” He hooks his leg over Castiel’s, and his own lungs seem to deflate when Cas pulls almost all the way out of him, pushes in again. “Fuck.” The backs of his knees sweat.

Castiel grips the back of his neck; pulls him up, desperately, to kiss him; but he can’t move properly from that angle and has to let him go, Dean murmuring encouragement as his thrusts get faster, harder, less controlled. The moment that he’s able, Dean reaches between them to wrap a hand around his own dick, stroking himself in time with Cas’ movements, with his soft, cut-off cries.

The pressure of Cas inside him, the sound of his voice setting his skin on fire, the fact that he’s _here,_ that this is happening for _real,_ is enough to tip him over the edge with a noise that can only be described as a sob. Castiel says his name in response, looking at him with eyes wide; a short, awestruck gasp; and hitches Dean’s leg a little higher with his hand, thrusts inside him even faster than before, murmuring quietly, desperately, between them. Dean hooks his leg over Cas’ waist, pulling him in deeper, and Castiel actually looks surprised when he comes, hand finding Dean’s against the bedclothes and holding on tight.

The first thing Dean can think to say, once he’s almost got his breath back, is “Sam _might’ve_ heard that.”

“Dean, please be quiet.” But he’s grinning. “Dean.” He says, again, like punctuation. Dean doesn’t really know if he’ll ever get tired of it.

He pulls out, slowly; Dean, sore and loose, grunts softly at the awful drag of it, and tries to splay himself not _quite_ so obscenely while Castiel pulls the condom off himself, ties it up, and throws it in the general direction of the trash.

“I cleaned this room, asshole.”

“I’ll get it in the morning.” No apology, but Dean hadn’t expected one. Castiel comes to sit next to him on the bed; he finds Dean’s hand again, and plays with his fingers. “Worth waiting for.” He says, quiet. Dean chuckles.

“You can say that again.”

“I meant, _you.”_

Dean pulls a face. “C’mon, Cas, don’t be a sap.”

“I mean it.”

Dean looks at him with reluctance. “Yeah, I’m sure you do.” He mumbles; but he squeezes Castiel’s hand, all the same. “M’tired.” He says, maybe a little too quickly. “M’gonna sleep here, if that’s cool with you.”

“It’s fine.”

There’s little more to be said, really, after that; he falls asleep, much like the last time they saw each other, to the soft rhythm of Castiel’s breaths against his skin.

\---

For a moment, waking again to the sound of water moving in the bathroom at four in the morning, Dean forgets that Castiel ever left; he’s filthy, come dried on his stomach, and he wipes at it futilely as he pulls a shirt on, succeeding only in making himself feel a little more gross.

He wanders over to the bathroom door, and takes a deep breath.

“You okay?”

Castiel murmurs, “I’m fine.” Through the door, and Dean wonders whether or not to call him out on what a crock of bullshit that so obviously is.

“You gonna open the door?”

There’s a brief, tense silence. Dean swallows; the door opens. In the crack of light that shines through, Castiel’s face appears. The light is so bright in the dark bedroom that for a moment it hurts his eyes; Castiel’s skin is red around his eyes, his mouth, his nose.

“You okay, Cas?”

“I’ll be alright. I just – it’s not anything, really.” He looks as if someone has pared him down, stripped him of all his usual strength. Dean can barely believe that this guy and the one he went to bed with are the same person. “Let me –“ he glances, briefly, back into the bathroom. “Let me just… get clean.”

“Okay.” He’s hesitant to leave him there, but goes back to bed. It’s ten, maybe fifteen minutes before Castiel crawls in with him again.

“I still have dreams like that, you know.” Dean says, mostly to the ceiling.

Castiel is curled next to him, not touching him, and he says, “I know.”

“Nothing really helps.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Cas?”

“Mm?”

“Is that why you went? ‘Cause of, you know, the dreams?”

“You mean because I felt guilty.”

“Yeah.”

Castiel shifts in the bed; Dean can’t see him, so he doesn’t know what he’s doing, exactly, but he traces the line of Dean’s spine with a palm. “I suppose that’s why I’ve done a lot of things, lately.” He sighs.

Dean mulls that over for a little while and tries desperately not to overanalyse it. “Why’d you come back?”

“I missed you.”

“That it?”

“I missed Sam, too.” The silence feels so heavy in the darkness. Dean closes his eyes. Says nothing. After a moment or two, Castiel’s voice drifts over him again. “It was such a long time. I started thinking it would be forever.” He pauses. “We went everywhere. It’s different, going places as a human.” he sighs. “It feels so different.”

Dean remains quiet.

“The night before you and Sam saw Charlie, in the summer, I was in Colorado.” He says it softly. “I was on a road; our bus broke down; and there were only a few of my brothers and sisters left. The road was so long I couldn’t see anything at the end of it, even though I knew there was something there. That there always would be. And where I was, was beautiful; this long, orange plane. It was remarkable.” Dean feels him lean forward and kiss his shoulderblade. “But I realised then that I wasn’t happy.”

“Is that why you called?”

“Mm.” his voice gets quieter. “I realised that I loved you, in more ways than I’d known before, and I was… reluctant to give up what we’d cultivated together.” Dean’s breath is short and sharp in his throat. “And I missed you. I wished you were with me.”

Dean is silent in the darkness; something has pulled itself over him, some shroud that sounds like a hot press of blood, roaring in his ears. He doesn’t know what to do, what’s appropriate; if he should roll over and face him, and say something. If he should just shut the fuck up and listen.

Drunken, in that field, he’d been so close to blurting it out. Love, like it was nothing. Like you could just _say it_ and not pay a price.

“I thought the dreams would stop if I helped them; if I gave up what I wanted for them.” His tone is careful. “But they didn’t. They’re the same. It’s always the same.”

Dean does turn over, then, and he looks at him. “It takes time.” He says, repeating what Sam always told him, reading up on PTSD. “It’s just – it’s time, Cas. It’s not about… making up for it, or penance, or whatever. It’s not some fucking scoreboard you can equalize, it’s – you made a mistake.” He laughs. “We’ve all fucking made mistakes. You’re in good company.”

“It’s funny.” Castiel starts, “I feel terrible because you – you and Sam, being here - make me feel so much better. It doesn’t stop, but –“ he gives a small, bitter little laugh. “I saw so many wonderful things out there, but none of it felt like a life. Not like it does, being here with you.”

“I don’t need you to need me, Cas.” He says quietly. Castiel turns his head against the pillow to look at him.

“I don’t need you.” He murmurs. “I _want_ you. I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean can feel Castiel groping for his hand under the sheets, but evades him for the time being. “You’ve got it.” Castiel’s hand finds his.

“Thankyou.”

“You don’t have to keep saying that all the time.”

“I know.” He draws breath. “I’ll have to leave again sometime, probably. They’re still not –“ Dean waits, breath bated, while he fumbles for his words. “They’re still not… stable. Neither am I.”

“But you’ll come back.” It’s not a question, not really, but it feels like one. He still wonders if Cas will say no.

“I’ll come back. As often as I can, for as long as I can. Does that – is that alright?”

Dean thinks of days to come, when Cas is on the road somewhere again, caring for his gaggle of siblings. He thinks of the days when Sam and he will live separate lives, and imagines that time is coming fast; he saw the light in Sam’s eyes when he talked about going to college, about being _free._ Dean knows it won’t be long until he wants to take that for himself. If eighteen Fallen angels, barely human, can do it, then so can the kid with the demon blood. They both know it; Dean perhaps moreso than his brother.

“It’s fine.” He means it. “It’s good.” And it is. It will be.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little epilogue ♥

It’s already January by the time any of them realise New Year’s has been and gone.

Dean finds himself a little disappointed; he tells Sam this the next morning; Cas is still in bed. Sam rolls his eyes.

“We’ve _never_ done anything for new year’s.”

“So it’s a crime to start?”

Sam snorts, not dignifying that with a response. He waits a couple of seconds while his coffee is brewing, then clears his throat. “You and Cas – you’re okay?”

Dean nods, eyes cast down into the bowl he’s using to make pancake mix. “Yeah.” It comes out quieter than he means it to. “We, uh. Hashed things out.” He damn near _blushes;_ if Sam notices, he forgives it.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll kill him if he hurts you.” Sam says then, no small degree of mirth colouring his voice, and Dean laughs, too.

“Bit late for that.” The silence that follows after that is purposeful, and Dean turns to his brother. “I didn’t mean that. You know it’s been a mess between us. It’s – you know, some of it’s not easy to get over.” He shrugs. “We’re talking about it though. We’re gonna be better. Both of us.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so, yeah.”

Sam seems satisfied with that, and nods. “Good. Cool.” He laughs. “You’re a pain in the ass when he’s not around, anyway.”

“Fuck you.”

\---

In the weeks that follow, Castiel _stays._

If Dean was worried at all about three being a crowd, it dissipates quickly; Sam and Cas, it turns out, have a lot in common; both of them are _huge dorks,_ both of them are a little quiet sometimes, both think they’re fucking hilarious (even though they _aren’t)._ Sometimes Dean worries about them, even; the way they turn to each other simultaneously whenever he says something they find particularly exasperating.

Annoying, sure, but good, too. He and Castiel are still technically new, but in so many other ways they aren’t; they’ve known each other for more than six years now, and in all that time they’ve learned each other’s patterns, each other’s space. Dean’s known for _years_ that Castiel is a little stubborn, a little prideful, a little weird. That he’s patient. That he’s like Dean in the way that he cares just a _little_ too much, maybe. That he’s _good;_ in his marrow, in his muscles, in his flesh and heart alike.

 Everything he learns while Castiel is staying is the good stuff; the fun stuff. How he takes his coffee, whether or not he gets up early or stays in late (it’s the latter). He takes long showers, so long that Sam and Dean gripe at him for using all the hot water (Dean finds a solution and jumps in with him; Sam doesn’t take it that well). Dean falls asleep at least a couple nights a week with his head on Castiel’s shoulder, watching late-night TV.

All in all, it’s – good. Better than he thought. Even hunting, the one potential aberration, is okay after a couple of growing pains. It’s not actually that hard, fitting another person in his life; it just means he has someone in his bed at the end of the day; someone there other than his brother, to make him smile, and laugh.

Castiel meets Charlie and is, Dean thinks, a little overwhelmed by her enthusiasm – “ _You’re practically famous! I’ve read so much about you!” –_ but charmed by it, as well.

She walks in on them one morning; Dean making breakfast, Castiel impeding it by fitting himself to Dean’s back and kissing his neck. She deems it - _them -_ ‘gross’, which gives Sam someone to commiserate with, at least.

And at the end of the day, there’s someone to come back to. Not just _someone,_ but _Cas,_ who Dean always misses every god damned minute he isn’t there; who knows him, all of him, and chose him anyway.

He still has the dreams; so does Dean, sometimes. Nothing is never as perfect as you picture.

But it’s good. Better than good; better than things have been for Dean in a long, long time.

\---

Castiel leaves again in late march, eyes lowered to the dust beneath his feet as he says goodbye. He holds Dean in his arms the morning prior, murmuring to him, _Dean, I need to. I’ll come back._ Hands careful and warm against the sides of Dean’s face.

And what can Dean say, but _okay?_

They say goodbye on the platform, this time. Three months later, its _Hello, Dean_ again.

He clasps him at the station, Castiel’s words – _I missed you, I love you so much –_ a comforting heat against the shell of his ear.  

Each time he stays, he goes, and each time, again, it is the same; the joy overrides the brief loss; the weight of Castiel in his arms is an anchor.

Dean can rage about it; hate the empty space beside him, hate the quiet car, but truly, it’s undeniable.

In the end, he always, _always_ comes home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey sweets ♥ 
> 
> If you've reached the end of this fic you have my undying devotion anyway, but here goes: 
> 
> Thankyou so much to everyone who has been with me with this fic. 
> 
> First of all, special thanks to [Julia](http://mishachester.tumblr.com), who endures my incessant rambling on a daily basis, as well as strokes my fragile ego; who is a wonderful friend, a source of inspiration, and general the best (but, you know, the worst as well). Special thanks also to [Lis](http://clotpoleofthelord.tumblr.com), whose gorgeous comments and endless support for my writing (in general, let alone on this fic) is a source of wonder and amazement to me (and doesn't go unnoticed to any degree, i promise ♥). 
> 
> To everyone on here and on Tumblr who has sent me messages about this fic, or commented, or reblogged, or left me Kudos; it never would have been what it was without you, and to date this is one of the longest things I have ever written, and some parts of it I am incredibly proud of.
> 
> I would honestly be nothing without you guys. You keep me going; you make me smile.
> 
> Thankyou so much for sticking with me throughout; it means the world to me.
> 
> You're incredible ♥♥♥


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